


Secrets Revealed

by Aleph (Immatrael), EarthScorpion



Series: Ascensions and Transgressions [14]
Category: Exalted
Genre: F/F, F/M, Role-Playing Game, Roleplay Logs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2020-03-05 14:48:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 17
Words: 197,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18830851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Immatrael/pseuds/Aleph, https://archiveofourown.org/users/EarthScorpion/pseuds/EarthScorpion
Summary: Keris keeps many secrets - from her masters, from her family; even from herself. But even the greatest deceptions sometimes slip, and the truth can be harsh indeed.





	1. Chapter 1

The green sun beats down upon the terrible-yet-beautiful expanses of the Conventicle Malfeasant, flesh-geography of the demon princess Lilunu. There is a party without compare in Creation going on here, where the decadence might shock a jaded dynast and melt the mind of a naive mortal. And within one of the grand halls is a beauty of the world, sprawled out on a divan as she consults with her peers and the terrible demon princes that she serves.

She is very bored.

“... and the next item on the agenda is coordinating efforts to weaken the Western aspects of the Realm Merchant fleet and so harm the finances of Princess Vanefa,” says Pelepese Anadala. He is a pudgy looking man, whose features are none too handsome and were not even before his eyes turned jet black and his mouth filled with rows of teeth.

The Realm Merchant fleet does not venture south of An Teng very often. But Keris Maryam Dulmeadokht is stuck here, in the Enlightened Board of the Warm Oceans of the Stolen Realm, because she’s one of the regional directors. That means she has to be here to attend as her directorate is part of the general board that handles the affairs of the southern part of the West. She’s here with Anadala, the vicious Western pirate-queen Kasteen Akwilia, and... shudder, Deveh.

((A chance for you to describe Keris, because this is right after the bragging session and she’s waiting to get to a party (and Sasi’s arms) but she’s stuck here in a meeting. So she’s still wearing what she wore to the bragging session, and she’s going full decadence here given she’s been playing the corruptor and temptress this year.))  
((Also, importantly, it annoys Deveh.))  
((The most critical reason.))  
((In fact, the clothing, if chosen properly, will be a stunt bonus to a “Piss off Deveh” roll.))  
((Eeexcellent~))  
((Okay, so she’s basically Anck-su-namun, but her tattoos are less symmetrical and patterned and also give people Mood Swings (Lust {In My Presence}) if they stare at them for too long. She’s also wearing her own feathers as extremely minimal “clothing”.))  
((Per + Pres, +3 dot stunt for “infuriating Deveh”.))  
((4+5+3 Temple-as-Body Style+3 stunt+4 Pelagic Muse Artistry autosux for the tattoos=15. 6+4=10 sux. Mwaa haa, I no think Deveh liek her muchly. And that was without Excellencies, to boot.))  
((Keris: “Who, me? I’m not _trying_ to annoy him. I’m just innocently sitting here doing nothing.” :3))

She takes advantage of the opportunity afforded by everyone looking at Anadala to stretch. At least she’s not too hot. Since she knew she was going to have to put up with this sort of thing in advance, Keris chose to dress for comfort. Since she had Sasi egging her on - and, yes, okay, since it would piss off Deveh - she chose to do so by not dressing in much at all.

Which is why she reclines on the satin-wrapped divan in an outfit comprised almost entirely of bare, dusky skin. Tattoos of gold and silver wind all over her - real precious metals laced into the soil of flowers to be absorbed into the dyes. They’re hypnotic and organic in how they follow the lines of her body; asymmetrical and maddening. Those who stare at them too long will find their lusts raging out of control and their reason waning.

Her sole nod to modesty is a pair of garments that give her the very least limit of decency; a breechcloth and low-hanging necklace comprised mostly of her own feathers. Other than those, she’s wearing only jewellery and body oil, which gleams in the light of Ligier and tints the gold in her tattoos to a greenish hue that will no doubt please him to see. She’s certainly attracting the attention of that pudgy Realm bureaucrat Anadala. Deveh is not looking at her. In fact, he’s trying to avoid even looking in her direction, as he sits there. The cheek! He’s barely wearing more than her! He’s wearing a long skirt and baring his slender, pale chest that’s been painted silver.

And then there’s Kasteen - her dreadlocks bound in tainted jade, her brass breastplate a dented demonic maw, her oversized jagged saw-edged cleaver propped against her throne. She’s looking at Keris with disdain. The disdain of a raider and pirate for someone dressed like a Yozi-priestess and decadent.

“Look,” she grates at Anadala. “It’s simple. Tell me when they show up, and I’ll plunder them. That’s all you have to do.”

“It’s not so simple,” the bureaucrat says. “There’s only so much information I can feed you - and while I’m building my spies, the Dragon-chosen can track down such leaks if they know to look for them. You need to build your own intel sources in Western ports.”

“Listen, you pasty-faced shit...”

“He’s not wrong,” Keris puts in, amused. Kasteen is... well, Keris hasn’t ever really been very social with her fellow Infernals. But she’s _pretty_ sure she hasn’t seen the woman before. A directorship in her first year is unlikely, so she probably came to prominence sometime in the year before last Calibration and did something impressive to land her current seat.

Or to put it another way, she’s the only one in the room not aware of how horrifyingly lethal the decadent Yozi-priestess she’s been sneering at is capable of being. Because Anadala is - Keris vaguely remembers his pudginess from the last Calibration she actually attended properly - and Deveh is fully aware of how much havoc she’s wrecked on Sasi’s orders.

“If you start blindly hacking at everything he can feed you and make no progress anywhere else, they’ll put a magistrate on the case,” she continues. “A real one, not some idiot who got his position on family connections. I’ve gone up against two. They’re like sharks. They can smell blood in the water from miles away, and they never stop moving and looking for prey.”

Keris smirks. It’s not a pleasant expression.

“At which point whoever they task to it will cast a wide net and narrow down where you’re getting your targets, and then drop the All-Seeing Eye on his end,” she jerks a thumb at Anadala, “and send a fleet to yours that’ll lure you into a trap. You need to get information from a hundred different streams, not one pipe they can follow.”

Anadala looks somewhat surprised at this, and appreciative - well, appreciative in a sense that isn’t just the way she’s dressed. “Indeed,” he says thankfully, smiling widely. “And you might not be aware of it, but we have to balance the orders of more than a few Unquestionable ones. Iasestus and the Shashalme both have interests in An Teng, Yuula has declared an interest in the Anarchy, and that’s on top of the standing orders we have from the Prince of Leeches to build him a fleet worthy of the greatest pirate in Creation.”

Ah yes, that name rings a bell. The greater self of Asarin is showing an interest in the West? There’s a hint of pinkness on Kasteen’s cheeks at his title. “Why are you going on about that?” she demands. But Keris suspects - well, uh, guesses based on Asarin’s complaints - that she might be burning a candle for the Prince of Leeches. “We have our orders!”

((Keris notices that she has a positive principle towards Balanodo, though not what rank it is or its precise context))

“Because the Unquestionable, in their great wisdom, sometimes see more clearly than we mere servants are able to,” explains Keris, the sarcasm light enough to be deniable should anyone ask - or pick up on it. “Specifically, in the matter of which orders we should follow when they give edicts that seem to conflict.”

She glances over towards Anadala. “Speaking of which, I’d heard about Yuula declaring interest, but not the details of her stake. Has she given any?”

“By my understanding, cultists and rich unguents and...” he coughs into his hand, “... fine wines of Creation.”

There’s a sneer on Deveh’s face. “Nothing to concern me, then,” he says. He holds his hands in front of him, as if cupping an unseen sphere. “Wise Iasestus gives me guidance. That is all I need.”

Keris rolls her eyes. “I’ll be able to handle Lady Yuula’s indulgences,” she says. “And I’ll be doing some damage to the Merchant Fleet economically over the course of the next year by muscling them out of their profits from trade in the Anarchy.” She raises an eyebrow at Anadala, ignoring Kasteen as though she were a sulky child. “I assume you can make use of that?”

He nods to her, and shows her the compliment of his eyes meeting her face. “Yes. If you can limit their safe harbours, I can work with this. I want to stretch the Navy, not force them to give up areas yet. If you can do that, we can set up a sorcerous channel to exchange reports on fleet movement.” He tilts his head. “I’m very interested in how your Hui Cha can be of use. I think we can get some mutually beneficial arrangements set up.”

A nasty little smile crosses Keris’s face. “Stretching them I can do. They’re already on the outs with the magistrate branch due to a...” she grins, “ _nasty_ little embarrassment last year. And I can start hitting their harbours from a few different angles, too. We’ll talk later about what I want in exchange.”

Spies in the Realm fleets, Keris is aware, will be worth their weight in silver. She’s been wanting a good hook into the affairs of the naval superpower for a while, and it sounds like Anadala can provide them.

There’s an ugly expression on Kasteen’s face. “Her pathetic little pirates? Who’d want them? I’ve heard of them - hells, I’ve killed their ships. They can’t fight for shit. This soft-bodied wench isn’t worth a cowrie.”

((Heh. Does Keris know how long she’s been an Infernal?))  
((She thinks this is her second Calibration.))  
((Haha. And Keris missed the last one. So Kasteen isn’t aware of how _fucking lethal_ Keris is. Amusing.))

“I’m worth quite a lot of cowrie, actually,” Keris says in a deceptively mild tone. “And my flagship could turn your entire fleet into splinters, so perhaps you should mind your tongue and learn from those more experienced.”

She glances at Anadala and Deveh, amused at the conflicted way she hopes the latter is feeling. On the one hand, he despises Keris. On the other, he probably doesn’t think much better of Kasteen, and he’d also probably agree with her point about listening to those with more experience if it wasn’t her saying it.

Kasteen's hand goes to her brutal, cleaver-like weapon. “Oh, you wanna fight?”

Anadala rolls his eyes. “Not in the meeting. Do it in the arena, if you _must_.”

“I’m quite bored of this,” Deveh says. “This... posturing is ugly, and not how things should be.” He shifts, as if he’s about to walk out. “If you two women will not take this seriously, I don’t think there’s any point in me being here.”

“But we still have several items to cover,” Anadala protests.

Keris puts on a disaffected sigh, internally cheering at the thought of getting out of the fucking meeting. “I don’t think we’re going to get anything else done while our junior member is chasing a fight,” she points out. “I’ll take her to the arena to work out our differences, and we can finish our business at a later meeting.”

“I suppose it was too much to hope we could get all the meetings done today and then head out to parties,” Anadala says wearily. “Very well. Deveh, you can go. I think I’ll follow these ladies and admire the spectacle. Perhaps lay a few wagers on the outcome. I do hope Lady Yuula attends.” From his faint smile, he’s gambled with her before.

“I’m sure you know where best to lay your bet,” Keris agrees, sharing a smirk with him. “Come along then, Peer Kasteen. You can show me how well-equipped you are to fight off an Immaculate master when the Dragonkin send a brotherhood of them after your fleet.”

* * *

The silver sands of the colosseum within the All-Thing are no stranger to violence. Blood sports are a great entertainment for many of the Infernals, both watching and partaking in them, and this would be far from the first time that two directors have come to a clash that can only be settled with violence. In fact, there is a protocol for it - they choose whether to fight to first blood or incapacity, and there is a Priest whose duties include stopping the fight if it looks like one of them might die. The victor gains both bragging rights and a favour from the defeated.

“I want to see her flat on her fat ass,” Kasteen snarls to the Priest. “Fight to incapacity.”

“Incapacity works for me,” Keris says cheerfully. She hasn’t changed outfit, and the silver dust stirs around her feet and the trailing end of her braid. Iris coils happily on her arm, having flitted out on their way to the arena with an invitation to Sasi to come and watch. The fighting pit is a grand place, and the titanic basalt stands are filling fast. The demonic hordes here have heard that two of the princes of the Green Sun are fighting, and such a spectacle is something to see.

Green fire burns all around the walls of the pit, in great brass braziers which sit upon the sand. There are angyalkae by the hundreds, positioned around the upper room so the whole arena is filled with the music of the fighters which shifts and swells as one gains advantage over the other. Beasts the size of yeddims turn mechanisms which add hazards to the arena. Blood apes beat drums that mean the whole space beats like a heart.

The Priest has a throne, where it sits to watch the fight and make its judgements. This one is unusual; it wears a dented and half-melted jade helmet over its hooded fire. Blue burns from the eyesockets.

“Two princesses come here to resolve a dispute. They have chosen to fight to incapacity. By the law of the Desert, the stronger one is right and the lesser will fall before her and serve her for a task.” Its burning gaze sweeps over them. “Keris Dulmeadokht; Kasteen Akwilia; do you understand accept this, knowing that cruel tortures will fall upon you if you breach the rules of this sacred combat?”

“I do,” Keris agrees solemnly.

Kasteen leans on her cleaver - this monstrous weapon as wide as a man’s torso. “Yeah,” she says.

The priest raises its hand. The drums stop. “We offer prayers to the All Makers,” it says, “and honour them with the blood shed here. We offer curses to the traitor gods, whose eyes will never profane this place. We offer veneration to the Unquestionable who watch us here.”

It rises from its seat, and bows to the grand spectacle boxes before it. “Princess Lilunu, Princess Yuula, Prince Balanodo, Prince Fossyi - what is your will?”

Lilunu is up in the spectacle boxes - so is Sasi, beside her, a tiny figure. “I have nothing to say,” she says, a tense note in her voice. It echoes around the stands.

“Ha! Make a good fight of it! I’ve got money riding on this!” Yuula adds.

“You can do it, Kasteen! I believe in you!” Balanodo shouts. Keris narrows her eyes. This is the first time she’s seen him pay attention to her. He wears the form of a young man of the Scavenger Lands still in the first bloom of youth. His coal black hair merges seamlessly with the black spiked horns that protrude from his crown. He dresses simply and humbly as a peasant, wearing a white tunic and black trousers. Despite his power and authority in the legions of Hell, the eye naturally skips over him.

And Keris can hear the squirming leach-mouths he has in place of pupils rasp their teeth against one another.

Keris rolls her shoulders comfortably. “You know,” she says in a friendly sort of way, “if you drop your sword now and grovel, that’ll probably count for incapacitation. It’ll save you a lot of trouble and pain.”

“And if you get down and kiss my feet, I won’t scar you up. You won’t be much good for getting laid once I’m done!” Kasteen snaps back.

Keris shrugs, and realises with _delight_ that the way Kasteen’s eyes follow the motion is more than just a fighter sizing up a foe. Either her mind is so defenceless that she has no way of resisting the lust-inducing magic of Keris’s tattoos, or she didn’t realise they were something she needed to guard against.

Either way, with the drums stopped and the statements made; they’re free to fight. The only reason Kasteen hasn’t attacked is because - hahah - she’s too captivated by Keris’s almost nude body.

“Suit yourself,” says the Wind-Kissed. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

She’s lunging before the last syllable is even formed. The huge, ponderous cleaver - not even jade, made from some strange western metal - rises as Kasteen swings it up at Keris, aiming for her chest.

Keris feels the world slow down, sees in red and white and blacks - and laughs as she twists out the way so casually that the metal slides against her skin peeling off a layer of oil and snags on her necklace, snapping it. Silver feathers scatter down around them in slow motion.

Then her heel comes around in a perfect arc and she smashes it into Kasteen’s nose. Her slick hands take full advantage of the weakness in Kasteen’s grasp from the sudden pain, and now this monstrously heavy weapon is in _her_ hands. She continues the spin, transferring the cleaver into her hair to build up speed and leverage as it spins round. But she doesn’t aim it at the woman. Instead she lofts it away on a ballistic arc towards a gnashing grinder-pit of burning Isidorite spines that pulls everything nearby towards it with a sucking gravity. It flies straight and true, aimed directly at the heart of the pit. Kasteen won’t be getting it back anytime soon.

Especially since, as her heel touches down, Keris calls on Vali’s explosive speed and follows the flying weapon. Anima-light explodes around her as her feet crackle with blue-black lightning, and the sands are blown away in a ten-metre circle by the blast of force.

Caught completely off-guard by the sudden move; Kasteen takes the full force of the force-pulse to the face. But it doesn’t send her flying as it should. The explosive ripple of force bounces back and slams into Keris, a ripple of transparent force that tries to lift her off her feet.

But Keris is already running, and nothing - _nothing_ \- can interrupt the wind in motion. She doesn’t ignite her own soul; merely sparing the furious pirate a mocking glance over her shoulder as her quickened steps take her up onto a whirling dervish of blades that looks like someone took the gear system from the watermill at Baisha, stuck a bunch of extra shafts and wheels onto it, and covered them all in sharp objects and the occasional firewand opening.

Disarmed and abandoned in the middle of the arena, Kasteen _screams;_ a sound of raw undiluted rage that echoes through the fighting pit and bounces off the walls. She throws back her head and yells to the whirling stars of Malfeas as she ignites in a terrible bonfire of black and green. It’s a pillar that rises up to the heavens, and her hair dances around her head, dripping fire. Behind her rises a great mandala of black stone, and the same stone wraps over her covering her forehead and arms, as bat-like wings sprout from her back.

Keris whoops as she dances up the death-wheel with ease; her feet light on the lethal surfaces, her balance impeccable as she runs along the turning, churning components. She keeps up a constant barrage as she does; imperceptible locks of hair among the three-metre curtain streaming behind her flicking slingstones, knives and poisoned needles at her foe. Now and then she spares another glance - in order to bring up toxic vines and snarling brambles beneath Kasteen’s very feet. Kasteen doesn’t seem to care about the traps, and the blades and needles and slingshots that Keris directs at her as she dances away only fuel her rage. Her leathery wings serve as a shield, protecting the parts of her body that the brass cuirass doesn’t cover. She charges at Keris, ignoring the spinning death blade in her way. It shatters against her thigh, and with a berserk yell she tears it up from the ground and throws the broken shattered mechanism at Keris.

With an almost casual hairstand, Keris flips over the scything blade - a leaping salmon painted gold-green and silver - and kicks it out of the way. She trails echoes of herself in anima-flight as she lands, and whips a needle at Kasteen. It pierces all the way through her wing, and the muscle goes limp. Poisonous vines and barbs spring up around the taller woman, snarling her legs and trying to trip her as they dig in. She tears through them, snapping new growth with terrible force.

With a scream, the other woman starts punching bursts of cutting desert sand that howl and shriek. Her yells are staccato bursts. But flowing Keris backs away, stepping in and between them - and worse, posing more for the crowd than her enemy. Flowers bloom around her, tossing up their petals to add to her beauty.

They’re cheering her name in the audience. Hollering it. Beating their chests. “Ker-is!” they scream. “Ker-is! Ker-is!” She’s putting on a show and they love it. They love her. They want her. It’s more than Kasteen can bear. Back arching, she slams both fists into the ground. “Devil Tyrant Avatar Shintai!” she screams.

Fire envelops her, and her anima-mandala swells and swells. There’s the sound of breaking bones as she rises; a basalt behemoth twice as tall as she was - three times taller than Keris. Her armour is rent asunder, and six arms swell from her back. Her feet burn the earth and the sand is pounded into stone. 

“I’m going to fucking murder you!” she roars, exploding forwards as she sheds the needles and barbs from her colossal wings.

“You’ll die trying,” Keris laughs, her hair drawing a song to match her words and the chorus of her kin as she slips around the monster.

And then her own soul ignites; a cyclone of scarlet light and sharp-edged silver mirrors whirling around her in a vibrant symphony. Her po emerges from her hair; a predatory serpent with scything wings that coils around her and hisses at the foe. Behind her, her own mandala forms; inscribed with the names of her souls in emerald radiance.

She lunges in the blinding light, dancing around Kasteen’s hulking form and setting her hair against the extra arms this monstrous transformation has granted the other Infernal. All she needs to do is get onto Kasteen’s back for a grapple and choke her out. With an even limb-count, the Shintai isn’t improving Kasteen’s performance nearly as much as she’d hoped it would - and those in the stands are whooping at the tiny woman going toe-to-toe with the enormous monster and holding her own. It’s not the first time Keris has fought an enemy bigger than she is - actually it’s rare she doesn’t, grr - but it’s not the first time she’s fought one bigger than a human, either. And the secret is; it’s _easy_ to beat foes like this. They’re just too big. Too ponderous and slow. Only idiots think size is a positive in a fight - in reality it inhibits speed, makes gravity work against you, tilts the odds away from your favour when you’re trying to strike a smaller, faster target.

The fists are tetsubos, coming in to smash her. They slam into the sands of the arena, missing the lithe form that dances between them, flitting to and fro. Kasteen screams, an explosion of molten glass erupting from all around her - the wind cuts through the glass like it isn’t there, beads dripping off her skin and blackening the oil. The last of Keris’s feather-wrap joins the glass as the strings burn through, but she doesn’t have time to care about that as she throws herself back from the other woman’s hooked wings that lash out like blades. Her entire body is a weapon now. Her wings are swords, lashing out; her eyeless face of black stone is full of gnashing teeth.

Rolling away from a descending fist, Keris spins and kicks the arm. She feels the impact through her bones. Kasteen doesn’t even sway back at all - she’s as immobile as the black boar, but Keris knows she’s not really hurting her. She can’t be hit; but she can’t hurt. Not up close. And Kasteen is much stronger just from her size - a pin might not be as easy as she thought. Especially when she’s still oiled up.

“Ker-is!” go the crowds. “Ker-is!” With a furious roar, Kasteen pounds the ground with all six arms. The arena shakes like an earthquake has hit it and the stadium floor splits asunder, breaking open the hidden space full of mechanisms and pipes and grinding gears below. Something catches fire; something else explodes.

“You seem angry, Kasteen,” Keris laughs, despite her mild annoyance that she can’t get _onto_ the damn woman. “Tell you what! I think you’ve earned seeing my spear!”

The crowds cheer - an announcement like that, echoing the way Ligier consents to fight seriously only when his opponent has proven worthy, is a staple narrative of the kind of fight songs are sung about in Hellish drinking houses. And they cheer again as Keris reveals her spear with a flick of her hair, the deadly elinvar length jumping to her hand in a flash of crimson lightning.

She backs up from her close-range position, darting sideways and starting to run rings around Kasteen’s enormous form. Her bare feet skip across broken driveshafts and fountains of acid that jut and jet from the shattered floor of the arena; her jumps and leaps take her soaring over rents and chasms above the churning pit of death below. Kasteen’s rage hinders her now, as the environment becomes too unstable for her enormous form to navigate – while Keris is as free to move as ever.

But despite that, Keris has lost her easy win, and that annoys her. So fine. If she can’t choke the bitch out, she’ll _bleed_ her onto the ground instead. With her spear, she can hit her from ten metres away - and with her speed and the chaotic unreliable footing of the stadium, she can _keep_ that ten metres, and circle to stay behind her foe no matter how much she lashes out. The chains between sections of the staff extend as Keris starts to whirl it, and the deadly, poison-coated blade flickers out.

In light of the fact that she’s not technically meant to kill her co-workers; they’re non-lethal venoms.

They’re still going to hurt like hell unless Kasteen has some means of resisting them, though.

And suddenly the tables turn, as Keris starts _trying_. Green fire plays over the tip of her chain-link spear, but that’s just a distraction from the oily sheen that coats her body as much as the spear. Her hair, her limbs, even her feet play with the chain-link weapon - a kick to a segment sends it whipping around to smack into Kasteen’s jaw, then in her hair it’s suddenly coming in from the other side to stab her in a shoulder, cracking the stone.

She’s not fighting to kill. She’s fighting to humiliate. Her impossible ability far exceeds Kasteen wing-assisted jumps, and Kasteen can’t land a single hit on her. She stabs the other woman in the elbows, the wing joints, the flanks; she breaks her stone fingers with blunt strikes. And all the while, the poison is taking its toll. The basalt titan stumbles, wavers, wracked by agonising poisons.

And then Keris stabs her in the kneecap. She screams and falls to one knee as Keris shatters her stone bones.

So Keris shatters the other one, too.

Kasteen hits the ground with another earth-shaking impact. The brass mirrors around the arena shatter. Stone pillars crack. She screams, still wreathed in black and green fire, back contorting as she shrinks again, stone falling from her skin and leaving her - once more - mostly human.

She looks up at the slight woman who approaches her, wrapped in her own burning soul, her chain-spear now the only thing she wears.

“I’m... I... you’ll pay,” Kasteen grates out. “I’ll show you! You... no one does this to me and-”

“You did this to yourself,” Keris says scornfully. “You were arrogant and insolent, and you _couldn’t back it up_. The only person to blame for this is you.”

The spear slashes a vicious red line across the junior Infernal’s eyebrows. The wound blinds Kasteen as blood trickles down into eyes - and shows that Keris could easily have blinded her more permanently.

“Your knees are shattered, your fingers are broken,” Keris shouts for the arena to hear. “Your body is wracked with poisons and your Shintai is lost! Stand and fight, Kasteen, or admit your failure!”

She offers a bare foot to Kasteen’s lips; dust-stained from the running she’s been doing, but unmarked. The intent is clear. With a snarl, Kasteen lunges for the foot with her teeth bared. Her hand comes up as she puts the last of her strength into lacerating, green-tinged fire-glass aimed right at Keris’s groin. The spite, the envy, the hate is palpable.

Keris actually sighs as she sidesteps.

And then, because she’s quite looking forward to Sasi jumping her after this and does not feel at all sympathetic to this upstart bitch who doesn’t know when to _give up and accept she’s lost_ after an attempt like that to rob her of any enjoyment in being jumped, she whirls her spear and brings both ends slamming down.

The blunt weighted ball takes Kasteen full in the mouth and knocks out most of her teeth.

The blade hits her right between the legs in a gout of green fire.

“Overseer!” Keris calls over the agonised scream. “My opponent is incapacitated! Will you proclaim this match decided?”

The Priest just watches, and waits until the black and green fire has died down before raising one hand. “Keris Dulmeadokht is the stronger, and the correct one in their contest,” it announces. “This contest is over.”

The crowd erupts in cheers that seem to Keris to shake the earth as much as Kasteen’s fall did. “KER-IS!” they scream. “KER-IS! KER-IS! KER-IS!” Thousands of demons are screaming her name as she raises her hands in victory.

They come to carry away Kasteen and bedeck Keris as the victor, marking her brow in the other woman’s blood, draping gifts and gems upon her - for there are many up and coming demons who long to see such a champion wear their favours.

All around her she can hear the people _wanting_ her, wanting to _be_ her. It is a good feeling. No, it is the best feeling. They love her. They adore her. They worship her body. The celebrations are already starting as fire burns in the sky in the shape of her anima-banner - a gift from Lilunu.

She luxuriates in it, letting them lift her off her feet and carry her across the cheering masses on a wave of hands. A few lucky demons - the ones who bestow the finest favours on her - she blesses with her attention, or even a momentary smile.

((Compassion roll - 3 sux))

Eventually she sweeps her hair around and is set down just outside the arena, her hips rolling as she walks towards the exit from the Unquestionable’s viewing box. Now that her blood isn’t up and running hot, she’s starting to feel a little guilty. Not for the fight itself, but that last move... yes, Kasteen had tried to mutilate the same way, but she could have just kicked her teeth in and used the weighted ball on her crotch.

Kasteen is an Exalt, so she’ll heal. But the spearblade might have been a bit of an overreaction.

Slightly ashamed of her behaviour, Keris waits for her mentors and her love to emerge from their box - the guilt increasing a little at the realisation that Lilunu might not have enjoyed seeing two of her Infernals fighting so fiercely, even if she likes Keris better. The faint worry doesn’t show on Keris’s expression, but her hair fidgets a little as she hears Sasi, Lilunu and Yuula approaching.

((Rollin’ Yuula’s gambling sense... and fortunately she got 1 success, and didn’t bet against Keris))  
((W-what was Yuula’s “gambling sense” pool?))  
((Was it 1?))  
((It was 1, wasn’t it.))  
((It was 1.))  
_((oh my god, yuula))_

The first to greet her is the tall, dark-skinned and mercury-stained figure of Yuula. With her tattoos, Keris looks more like her than she had before. “Nice one!” Yuula crows, throwing her arm around Keris’s shoulders. She smells strongly of spirits. “Y’know what, I nearly, I nearly bet against you ‘cause they were offering 5:1 odds and that’s better than 2:1, but, but, but, Lilililililunu said I should be’ on you and I won! I won! Wooo!”

“Respected elder,” Lilunu says, brow creased, “all I did was inform you of their combat successes when you asked.”

“Well, I got a nice payout today!” She lets go of Keris, leaving her hair laden with mercury. “Woo! I’m going drinking to celebrate!”

“I’m glad to have served, my lady,” Keris grins. “I might come join you later.”

“Well,” and here Yuula’s slightly bleary, heavy-lidded gaze turns sharper, “you had fun, didn’t you? The roots in your blood are getting thicker. I can feel the change in you. More seeds and more roots, sprouting from your core.”

“Alms, alms, alms,” cry out the snakes following her, and she gives them a kick, “Shut it, I’m tryin’ to explain summin’ to Keris here, y’dumb snakes!”

Keris blushes a little. She _was_ riding a bit of a mercury high in that crowd. All of them adoring her, envying her, _wanting_ her. She can feel the quicksilver in her blood gaining more depth, reflecting more possibilities. Ways to get people loving her like that again with other performances - or even static art.

“I guess I can’t hide anything from you, can I?” she murmurs respectfully. “It _was_ fun, yeah.” Her eyes flick over to Lilunu and Sasi shyly. “And the audience loved it too,” she adds, with the faintest edge of a questioning tone.

“It was a thing to see, Keris dear,” Lilunu says, still frowning. She’s dressed in shimmering, radiant green picked out in bronze, and the diadem that frames her face only accentuates her unease. “The way you ended it was a little... excessive, but until then, it was quite the pleasant spectacle.” The roar of the crowd can still be heard from all around. In fact, Keris’s ears can pick out that large amounts of the stands have turned into an impromptu party. And carnal event. “And don’t think I didn’t notice your little prank with the tattoos.”

Sasi says nothing; her face is a mask. She is still wearing the demon-mask of her own face she donned for the All-Thing, for she dressed in the manner of the decadent tales of the Anathema of her childhood, and what traces of golden clothing she wears only flaunts her blasphemy against the Immaculate Order. She had been very amused by Keris’s tales of the Calibration parties of Saata, and what she wears is what one might wear to one of the more licentious events there.

Focusing on Lilunu instead of letting her nervousness at Sasi's reticence take over, Keris issues a little smirk. “Prank?” she asks with faux innocence. “What prank? If people happen to get a little hot under the collar after seeing me in all my glory...”

She spreads her hands in a gesture of blameless irreproachability. “Well, that’s probably just because of how stunning I look,” she finishes impishly. “But I’m sorry for using too much force at the end there. I overreacted.” She bows her head contritely in penance.

Lilunu sighs. “She’s going to hold it against you,” she says seriously. “I do hate it when my dear princes and princesses fight. Kasteen isn’t an awful person. She’s just a little... touchy. And short-tempered.”

“Well, I’ll try to keep it from getting too heated,” Keris offers. “As much as I can, anyway. And I’ll be more gentle if it comes to this kind of thing again.”

Iris coils up from her arm and blows a little puff of flame shaped like a stern face, then nips at a finger. It gets a snort out of Keris.

“And Iris will ride herd on me to make sure I behave,” she adds, amused at the temerity of her little dragon-familiar.

Lilunu rises gracefully. “Well, I believe I will be taking her with me,” she says, holding out her hands to Iris. The little dragon flies into them, with a happy exhalation as she nestles there. “Now, I believe Yuula and I will go,” she says, with a hint of a small smile. “You and dear Sasimana look like you might want some privacy.”

“Thank you, Unquestionable Lilunu,” Sasi says softly.

“And if you don’t, there’s controls to display the image of the box to all the stands!” Yuula crows crudely, before taking another swig from her clay jug.

“That is up to them,” Lilunu says. “Keris, dear, do stay for a few days after this is over. I want some time with you myself so I can pick your brains about certain renovations I want to make.”

“Of course,” Keris chirps, happy to spend time with her mentor. She waits for them to leave, then turns to Sasi.

“So, um...” she starts.

Sasi gestures first, inviting Keris to enjoy the luxuries of Lady Lilunu’s box. The divans are sinfully soft, there’s a gemstone-covered control bank, and there are kneeling servants by the door ready to bring any indulgence of her choice. One of the divans is quite ruined from Yuula’s presence, but there are others - and wines, spirits, and food on the tables.

“Sit,” she says. “You look tired. Your brow is still burning and she made you ignite all-out.”

“She didn’t _make_ me,” Keris objects. “I could’ve finished that fight at second-tier, if I’d wanted to. I only flared to full so I could match her unarmed in her shintai without getting anima-burn.”

Nonetheless, she does as she’s told, and sits. Sasi’s being strangely guarded, and it’s making Keris nervous.

Sasi sighs. “My love,” she says. She crosses and uncrosses her legs, cradling an overly-large glass of chalcanth. From its lilac hue, Keris thinks it’s neomah. “Did you _have_ to do that? In your very first Directorate meeting, you picked a fight with one of your peers - and then you show-boated! You fought her, naked and unarmed for most of the time, and only pulled out your spear right at the end!”

“... I won, though,” Keris mumbles. “And she’s the one who picked the fight.”

Sasi sits up, pulling off her mask. Underneath, her eyes are reddened. “And you didn’t think how worried I was out there, you naked and unarmed and her turning into a giant monster?” she snaps, voice cracking, shoulders shaking. “I... I know you’re good, but Keris, I _screamed_ when that first blow nearly hit you and tore off your necklace! I know... if just one of those punches had hit you, you’d have been down with broken bones. And that disgusting pirate woman is exactly the kind of fool who’d go too hard and accidentally kill her opponent!”

“Sasi...” Keris says, now feeling rather more guilty. “Sasi, love, I wasn’t in any danger.” She pauses. “Well, not much danger. Maybe a little at the start there, but once I got her sword off her I was fine. And I have my own Shintais, you know. If I’d felt at all threatened I’d just have ramped up to the same level of effort she was putting into it and crushed her instantly.” She scoffs. “That’s basically what I _did_ do; you saw how fast she went down once I pulled my spear out.”

She takes Sasi’s hands, squeezing gently. “Come on, you’ve seen me fight. You know how good I am. No second-rate pirate bitch is going to put me down. Trust me a little more?”

Sasi smiles then, and her smile is like the sun breaking for Keris. “Of course. You’ll always be my champion,” she says. “But forgive me a little for worrying when I saw that.” She pulls Keris closer, examining her arms. “Look at you! You’ve got soot marks on your skin and little bits of melted glass in your hair!”

Perhaps not coincidentally, this gesture also leaves Keris’s hands resting on her chest. Keris bites her lip at the contact, automatically caressing the swells under her fingers. “W-well,” she stutters under Sasi’s beaming expression. “I could’ve done it w-without getting dirty if I’d gone straight for my spear, b-but I, um...”

She’d had a reason, definitely. It just seems a long way away right now with such a gorgeous woman so focused on her - while, Keris remembers, she is _completely naked_. Not that she hadn’t already been aware of that, but it suddenly takes on whole new vistas of meaning under the heated look in Sasi’s eyes.

Sasi leans in, and there’s something darker, something more wicked in her smile. Less the sun, and more the whispering night. “You didn’t even put your armour on,” she says sweetly, lips hovering just before Keris. “Nor anything else. Could it be, my love, that you _loved_ the feel of the eyes on you? That you wanted everyone to see you beat her senseless while you were dressed for the bedroom, not for war? That you can hear all those rutting demons out there, driven into an orgy just because they watched your display? That they saw everything and it felt _good?”_

Dusky cheeks darken red, and Keris bites her lip.

“You know what?” she says, rather than admit the answer is ‘yes’. “I think the victor deserves a reward.”

And then four hair-tendrils that have been slinking around Sasi from under her field of view tighten around her hips and thighs, and Keris lifts and swings her onto the nearest hard surface, which happens to be the gem-studded podium. Her remaining two hair tendrils plunge down to the floor and lift her up into the gap between Sasi’s legs, until she’s looking down on her love; faces close together.

“Offer me some suggestions,” she whispers with dark promise, and claims a fierce kiss.

“I loved watching you,” Sasi murmurs when they break for air, as she shifts against her. “The fear made everything sharper. And the magnifying lenses let me see everything. That moment when the blade missed you. The way your muscles flexed as you side-stepped her. The fact that you were having so much fun.” Questing fingers reach in. “You’ve been soaked since this started. Since you knew I was watching.”

“I always am when you’re watching,” Keris murmurs. “Now about that reward...”

Out in the stadium, the celebrating demons feel their eyes drawn almost beyond their will to the great displays flickering on. The demonic fires burn brighter, as the accidentally-nudged control systems begin to display what is happening in the box. 

It is said that to view the couplings of the Yozis has a terrible effect on the minds of lesser beings. Perhaps it is true. Certainly, the thousands - tens of thousands - of lesser demons who see what happens in that box have their lives changed forever, their minds enthralled by the second great entertainment their champion puts on for them this night.


	2. Chapter 2

Twice a day, marking the dawn and dusk of the stolen world of Creation, the demons known as tomescu scream in the dreadful knowledge of their coming end. Such screams mark the passage of time in the Demon Realm; count out the beat of its days and years in the endless trickle of centuries that the Yozis have suffered in their imprisonment.

This one, to those near a certain townhouse in the Conventicle Malfeascant, comes a little early.

_“WHAT?”_ Keris shrieks, eyes wide and hair lashing in horror. “But... when... how...”

She shakes her head, circling around to another part of the catastrophe. _“How_ many citizens?”

It really is amazing how one sentence from her adjutant can contain so many different things to be mortified about.

“Compliments from _who?”_ she whines, dragging her hands down her face and keening in agony.

Her butler bows sinuously, unfolding a very long list. “The names are very extensive. Of the Unquestionable, Balanodo sa Elloge, Kuara sa Isidoros, Esterve sa Oramus, and Ipithymia sa Malfeas - and an invitation from her to perform with Lady Sasimana in her greatest theatre. Of the Lords of the Second Circle; Tereki sa Iasestus of the Hierarchy, Karapeshka sa Ululaya sa Kimbery, Mara sa Erembour of the Shadow of All Things, Viscero sa Iudivavisse shin Cecelyne, Lelabet sa Noh of the Shadow of All Things, Ianade and Bittesse, both of Balanodo, Mazah sa Sima shin Oramus, Claudia sa Ipithymia sa Malfeas and her brother Quintus-”

Keris slides off the chair, moaning pitifully and hiding behind her hair.

He clears his throat. “There is also a handwritten note from your daughter Haneyl sa Keris. The message is as follows: ‘Nice’. She has also drawn a picture of a hand with its thumb raised.” He turns it over. “She adds ‘I heard you made Mother very happy. Well done’.”

((o haneyl))

The helpless mortified puddle of abject humiliation on the ground lets out another whimper.

“Is there anyone,” she mumbles, “who _doesn’t_ know what- wait.” Her head rises slightly. “Did anyone get an account of Peer Deveh’s reaction?” There must be _some_ kind of silver lining to this, she reasons. Somewhere.

“No account, my lady, but we can make queries,” he says with a bow. “My lady, it will - I believe - be simple to rebuild your crew for your ship after this. There are demons outside the gates waiting for just a glimpse of you.”

“Do, on both counts,” Keris murmurs, pushing herself upright. Urgh. Zanyi must never, ever find out about this. Ever. From anyone.

It may be necessary to gag Haneyl when they go back to Saata, but that’s a sacrifice she’s willing to make right now.

“I’m,” she croaks, and clears her throat, willing the bright red flush to recede. It doesn’t. “I’m going to see Unquestionable Lilunu and spend some time on artwork with her.” In private. Away from anyone who might recognise her and... bring up her performance. Possibly forever. “Where are the children?”

“Which ones, my lady?” Mehuni says promptly. “Your babes are still within the area you set aside for them, with your body duplicate caring for them. Lady Asarin took Eko and Rathan to a party and they have not yet returned. Haneyl is, I believe, in the baths, and I believe Vali was visiting Peer Testolagh.”

She nods absently. “I’ll take the twins with me, then.” And avoid the baths. Hopefully Haneyl hasn’t ordered any of the servants to notify her of her mother’s return, because that conversation would probably make her drop dead with embarrassment on the spot at this point. “Lilunu will be happy to see them.”

((do de do, time to see if fortune favours Keris.))  
((It... does not. 2 successes on rolling Haneyl’s raw Cog.))

Unfortunately, her second daughter is a vicious, malicious predator who knows about hunting. She’s waiting in there when Keris arrives; mock-wrestling with Kali and teasing her with a lock of freshly washed hair, while Ogin naps on the bed. Haneyl beams up at her mother as Kali bats at grey locks, and Keris pre-emptively turns bright red and squeaks, eyeing the windows and door like a hunted animal.

“Say hi to mama, Kali!” Haneyl says playfully.

“Hi mama!” 

“Hi mama indeed! Mama is on holiday right now, like we all are. That means we’re in Hell.”

“Green sun!”

“Yes, Kali, green sun means Hell! It’s a really good sun, and doesn’t burn Big Sis Haneyl! Yellow sun is naughty there!”

“Grr,” Kali growls obediently.

“Exactly!” Haneyl glances at Keris. “Does mama need to give Kali a feeding time?” She’s showing no signs of embarrassment, but also none of gloating. No smugness, either, and Haneyl likes being smug normally.

“Mama was, um,” Keris says, grateful at this non-teasing but also deeply suspicious of it, “going to see Lilunu, and thought her babies might want to come. How about it, Kali? Do you want to see Lili again?”

Kali throws her arms wide. “Lili Lili Lili! Mama! Mama! Will Lili be Tiger Lili?”

Haneyl beams. “That’s a great idea, Kali! We should get her tiger lilies as a gift! You’re a genius!”

“Yay! I’m a gee-nus!”

Keris can’t help but smile; charmed by her daughter’s adorable charisma. Venturing fully into the bedroom, she scoops Kali up and cuddles her, giving her a kiss on the forehead.

“Alright then,” she says, looking over to find Ogin already alert and looking at her. A hair tendril gives him a path to climb up onto her shoulder, and she tilts her head to nuzzle his cheek with her own. “Come on. We’ll set off as soon as big sister Haneyl makes some pretty tiger lilies as a present.”

Haneyl fusses as she finds the right pot, and starts to cultivate the plants. “It was really sweet of you to do something like that for mother,” she says conversationally, as she focusses on the growing lily. “She’s really been missing you while she’s been stuck in the Realm. We had a chat on the way over, and she finds everything so ugly without people like you or Testolagh around. Even the prettiest dragonblooded don’t compare. So she’s probably feeling really beautiful and much happier now.”

Her face goes very red again, but Keris manages a cough and a mumbled affirmative. “She, um, seemed to enjoy it,” she agrees. “Though I wish I hadn’t... oh, gods. I’m going to have to go through the crowd at the gates, aren’t I?”

Haneyl beams at that. “You’ve done a _wonderful_ job of making allies, mama! All these demon princes and lords wanting to make your acquaintance! It’s much more effort than you’ve ever put in before at Calibration! You should have told me that you were planning to do something like this. So devious! And I heard you showed up some upstart bitch!” Her accent swings to the Nexan.

“Bit',” chirps up Kali helpfully.  


Keris whimpers slightly. “It... wasn’t exactly planned,” she mumbles. “Oh, but yes. One of the new princesses who,” she smirks, “was only on her second Calibration, so she didn’t know who she was challenging and thought I was someone like Sasi.”

“Dumb cow,” Haneyl says, shaking her head. “Okay, it’s a little rushed, but these should do it, mama!” She pats the pot. “Oh, by the way, keep away from the gallery hall baths for now.”

“... why?” Keris asks warily. “Is something wrong with them?”

“No, not at all.” Haneyl beams. She runs her hands through her - for once almost straight and emberless - hair, clearly enjoying the five days a year she gets as nearly pure human. “It’s just that Kuha mentioned to me and Elly that we were nice and all, but she was missing men, so I’m setting her up with Rounen too. And he’ll probably get all embarrassed if you wandered in and ruin all the work I put into that. Well, I say all the work, but it was... well, an hour or two and cooking them a nice dinner.”

After some blinking - and a wince at the memory of the last time she caught Kuha in the baths here - Keris elects to not think about that very hard. “Okay,” she says. “In that case, on to Lilunu.” She pauses. “By anyaglo,” she adds firmly. Nothing but nothing can get her to go through the crowds at the gate on foot right now.

Haneyl rolls her eyes. “And before you say anything, I’m not Calesco,” she says, giving Keris a kiss. “She got all flinchy about ‘you know it’s not love’ and stuff like that. She’s a friend, just like Elly and Rounen.” Haneyl pauses. “By the way, mama,” she adds, just before Keris leaves, “you probably want to clean yourself up. You’ve still got glass in your hair and sootmarks on your skin.”

“Ah?” Keris glances down at herself. Not only is she still dirty from the fight; her tattoos are still showing. Haneyl is ignoring them, and the twins are too young to be affected, but…

“Ah. Right. Yes.” She clears her throat. “You... watch the twins. I’ll go do that.”

And also get dressed properly, she decides. She’s feeling more than a little exposed now, after finding out about her accidental display.

* * *

“Ker-is! Ker-is! Ker-is!” shout the crowd as she flies over, along with more lewd suggestions and pleas. Her angyalo is crimson red, and matches her cheeks. It was thoughtful of Eko to...

... well, at least Eko is the one person she’ll be able to talk to without this hanging over her. Because she’ll have forgotten it as many times as she needs to.

Keris finds, though, as she nears the centre of the All-Thing, that the parties are still ongoing. In fact, the... uh, particular party she caused is still ongoing, and in fact intensifies as she flies over and they catch sight of her. The name Keris is on a thousand lips, prayers of demonkind directed up towards her.

And it seems likely that Lilunu will be in congress with the Unquestionable or communing with the Yozis, she realises when she sees that the main chamber is surrounded by legions in brass armour and flying crystal-lancer corps. Maybe there is somewhere else she should go, after leaving a message with the gate-guards.

Sighing, but bowing to the inevitable - Lilunu _is_ always incredibly busy this time of year - Keris twitches her hair-reins and guides her steed over towards Sasi’s estate. The twins will be glad to see Aiko again after several days without her, and Kali especially will no doubt be eager to fill her in on everything she’s been doing since arriving and babble happily about the light of the green sun.

Plus, Haneyl did have a point. A happy Sasi is a Sasi Keris likes spending time around. Even if it will be mortifying - and there’s likely to be a crowd at Sasi’s gate too.

There is, indeed, a crowd at Sasi’s gate is there, but smaller - and they cry out “Ker-is!” as she flies over. Touching down, she heads into the dark and cool of Sasi’s manse.

Sasi greets her with a happy kiss, and then kisses Kali and Ogin too. “I expect you two will be wanting to see Aiko, won’t you?” she asks.

“Yep!” Kali says, nodding seriously in unison with Ogin. “Sasi, we got flowers for Lili but she didn’t see us.”

“Oh, she’s very busy this time of year,” Sasi says seriously. “You’ll be able to see her soon. And what nice flowers. Did Haneyl make them for you?”

“Yep!”

“Wasn’t that nice of her? She’s Aiko’s big sister too, so you three are basically sisters and brothers already.”

“Yeah!”

“Sasi,” Ogin says seriously, “why is everyone around calling out mama’s name? They’re shouting Ker-is.” His mimicry is perfect, a sound much too loud for a baby this small.

“Because they all think mama is the best,” Keris tells him. “Mama had a big contest against another lady, and won, so everyone is very impressed right now.”

Ogin considers this. He nods. 

The babies are let into Aiko’s lavishly appointed bedroom filled with toys. But then again, that is Aiko’s life, isn’t it? For all the toys she has, she’s delighted to see the twins and she immediately gives them hugs. “This is Kali’s pillow and this is Ogin’s pillow,” she says shyly.

Keris puts them both down in their places, and scoops her... niece-slash-foster-daughter up for her own kiss and cuddle. “Hello little princess,” she says warmly. “Have you and your mama been having fun?”

Aiko nods so enthusiastically there’s some worry for her neck. “Mama’s back!” she says. “And Daddy, too! We got to eat together and they both hug me and you’re here too Aunty Keris and we’re all being a family! And since Haneyl is my sister and she’s also Kalianogin’s sister so we’re basically family too! This... this is the best best _best_ time of the year!”

Keris kisses her on the nose again. “I’m happy you’re happy,” she smiles, and sets her back down. “Why don’t your mama and I have some tea brought in, and you can let me know what you’ve been doing?”

Keris gets a long and rambling story of everything that Aiko and Daddy and Cousin Cally - no Kali, Shadow Cally not Kitty Kali - did when they were on a scary scary boat and how Daddy has a black fortress in the jungle and then they got on Aunty Keris’ shiny boat when she picked them up and then Mama was there when they got off and it was really fun and she loves it.

It’s a reminder of how quiet Aiko often is, and how much she opens up when she’s surrounded by her family and feels safe. Keris listens with one ear, and trains the other on Sasi. Her love really is happier - she can tell - and in here with Keris and her daughter she’s not as guarded as usual either. It gives Keris the opportunity to observe her quietly, and judge how she is - and how the last year has worn on her.

Sasi is... heavier. She’s been eating more, putting on weight. And there’s more coldblood and more hunger in her. Her face looks just the same, but then again, of course it would. There’s more than enough colourless fire in her to smooth away blemishes. And there’s a deep sadness in her eyes that creeps to the surface when Aiko talks about how much fun she had with Daddy and Shadow Cally. Shifting over slightly, Keris takes her hand below the table and squeezes sympathetically, leaning into her as a comforting support while they listen to the little girl speak. Sasi looks over at her with her iridescent eyes, and after a moment they soften.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she murmurs to Keris. “Can we leave them to play? I want to talk.”

Keris nods, waits for Aiko to reach a relative stopping point, and coaxes her into introducing her collection of toys to Ogin by name and rank while Kali plays pounce with some of the sturdier ones. With the little ones entertained, the adults draw away into a private room, and Keris coaxes Sasi down onto a divan.

Sasi joins her, lying on top of Keris with her head on her chest. “Thank you so much for taking care of Aiko this past year,” she says, arms wrapped around her girlfriend. “I... I would never have thought I’d trust my child to you when we first met. But I’m so glad you did. She’s... she’s clearly really loving it. I’m so happy for her. So happy I fell in love with you.”

“I’m glad I could help,” Keris says honestly. “She’s a sweet little girl, and... I’m happy to have her.” She avoids mentioning the loneliness. With Sasi this fragile... no, something like that would put her off-balance to dangerous levels. “I’ve... I’ve been worried about you. All alone in the Realm - tell me honestly, how bad is it there? How are you holding up?”

Sasi sighs. “I’ve done it before,” she admits. “But... but last time, I wasn’t leaving anyone behind. I wanted revenge. On people from... my old life. It’s... harder. Harder when I wanted to be back in my villa in An Teng, with my daughter and you. The Realm... I travelled a lot. Did things to find people’s secrets, lure them into honeypots, bring them into the faith of the rightful lords of Creation.” She pats Keris’s cheek. “Don’t worry, I kept the number of break-ins I did to a minimum. And only did them as the skulking shadow.” She wriggles up to Keris. “This year, it should be easier. I have the groundwork in place, and a new trick for being someone else. I should be able to take at least one long vacation to come see Aiko and you.” She worms in, rolling Keris up so she’s lying on Sasi instead. “Sorry, you’re bony. And look at you! You’ve really been a big woman this year! All on your own!”

Keris preens, and can’t resist the chance to brag. “The Hui Cha are all mine now,” she singsongs. “And Haneyl has contacts dotted all through the far South. I can ensnare Ca Map pretty easily with the medicine Yuula can teach me, and I’m starting to get hooks into the rest of Saata as Cinnamon.” She wriggles happily. “Soon I’ll have my hair spread all through the Anarchy.”

With a smile, Sasi strokes her hair. “It’s long, gorgeous hair,” she says with a kiss. “Doesn’t everyone want it?” She kisses her again, “I’ve been trying to work out Eko’s notes on demons. I’m not entirely there, but I think I’m putting things together.  At least, when I can find the notes.  My souls keep stealing them.  I don't think they're doing any better at understanding Eko.” Sasi shakes her head. “That girl is disgustingly intelligent.”

“She’s taken in some of the coldblood you have,” Keris murmurs happily, dazed by kisses. “Learned to, mm. Hide backstage and hide as minor characters. She can talk when she’s just a nameless guard or messenger. S’made her happy.”

“I live in fear for what she will get up to,” Sasi says. “On business - you didn’t anger Anadala when you were making enemies, did you? I have to work with him.”

“Nope,” Keris says happily, nudging her for more kisses. “‘xactly the opposite, actually. Backed him up ‘gainst Kasteen when she was bein’ dumb ‘bout spywork, and we’re gonna meet later’n’talk about how I can squeeze the Merchant Fleet by takin’ over from the Three Flame ‘ciety. Plus he was getting hard lookin’ at me and I’m pretty sure he made some money off my win.”

“He’s solid,” Sasi says. “Very fond of the ladies and pretty men, but he’s a solid administrator and excellent spymaster. Better than me, in some ways. I’m much better at acquiring agents, but he’s like a spider sitting in his web. If you can work well with him, you’ll do well.  Watch out, though - he holds grudges.”

“Spies in the Realm Navy, whoo~” Keris coos, stroking Sasi’s face. “He’s not much to look at though. Poor Sasi, surrounded by ugly people and Immaculate assholes.” She presses a long kiss to Sasi’s lips. “D’you know when you’ll be finished so you can come back to the Southwest?”

“Years, probably,” Sasi says hugging Keris close. “Cainan might die of old age, but I wouldn’t even risk _you_ in the Imperial City, let alone any of my agents.” She strokes Keris’s shoulders. “I have certain... contacts with the Dead. They’ve lost a Dead Exalt they sent against him. I might have taken more risks a few years ago, but I’m willing to go slower and more cautiously even if I stay away from you longer if it means it’s more likely I’ll see you again.”

Keris wrinkles her nose. Years is far too long, and the way she clings to Sasi possessively marks her unhappiness with the idea.

“I’ll see if I can make a spell that lets me create portraits like mine,” she promises. “So that you can see Aiko in the evenings. Maybe even one with an inner world, too.”

Sasi sniffs. “She’s gotten so big already,” she says, hugging Keris close. “We’re a strange little family, aren’t we? Aiko loves the idea that Kali and Ogin are her brother and sister.”

“Well, aren’t they?” Keris says. “We _are_ all a family. One clan, one kin. Maybe not a normal one, but...” she nuzzles Sasi’s neck and draws a squeak with a teasing lick, “we’re not normal people, either.”

They lie in peaceful silence for a while. Then; “Are you angry with me, my love?”

“What?” Keris jerks back a little, shocked. Has... has she realised about Kalaska? Has she seen the frightening thing coiled up inside Keris that she hasn’t dared let out? “No!” she objects desperately. “Why would you think that?”

Sasi looks into her eyes. “Keris, dear, I know you have a crowd outside your gate even larger than mine. I was just wondering if you were resenting or blaming me, because... well, you know I like the attention. And we have a lot of attention. Have you received the invitation from Unquestionable Ipithymia?”

Oh. Well. Phew. She’s not been seen through. But... Keris groans and covers her face with a free hair-tendril. “Yes,” she mutters. “And the list of congratulations. I stopped Mehuni after the tenth citizen. But...” She sighs. “I’m pretty sure I was the one who pinned you to the control bank, so... technically my fault.”

Her cheeks shade red as she remembers what they’d done _on_ the control bank. The fact that she’s lying on top of Sasi at the moment in a fairly thin silk dress doesn’t help dull the vivid recollections.

Sasi giggles. “I made sure I got a copy of the crystal-imprint from Lilunu,” she says. “We can watch it again some time. Maybe even see if we can get it working on the devices we found on the Royal Yacht.” She takes in Keris’s expression, and rests her hands on her cheeks. “You’re not happy.”

“I’m... awkward about this stuff,” Keris admits. “In public, anyway. Eko gets it from me, and you know what she’s like.”

Sasi strokes her face. “Was it any worse, any different from the fight?” she enquires. She seems genuinely interested. “You weren’t wearing any more - and this was a sign of love, while the fight was violence. I’d rather people know me for loving the woman I love than inflicting pain on others.”

Keris opens her mouth, closes it, opens it again, and hesitates for a while.

“... I dunno why,” she mumbles. “It just feels different.”

“You don’t get the same rush to think of all those eyes upon you, adoring you; worshipping you?” Sasi kisses her. “I do,” she admits. “It turns me on in the same way as watching you in the ring, without the fear you could get hurt.” She pauses. “And didn’t you mention in one of the dreams you sent me that you were doing veil-dances in Saata? I remember that dream fondly.” She smiles. “You demonstrated for me. It was a pleasant night.”

This gets another blush. “That’s... the lights are down when I do that. They don’t actually see me without the veils,” Keris protests. “Just a silhouette and their imaginations. That doesn’t count.”

“Well, then,” Sasi whispers into her ear, voice softly tempting, “can you think of something that would please the Street of Golden Lanterns that you would be happy with? I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable, even if I don’t understand why - but we do want her to like us. Remember what we want for our souls. And she is... petty when turned down. Not necessarily immediately, but we should put some thought into it.”

Keris bites her lip. Damn. She’d been kind of hoping to quietly ignore that invitation, or possibly pretend it had never been sent. But... Sasi has a point. When the Unquestionable give requests, their subordinates take them as orders.

“I’ll think about it,” she agrees wearily, the Zanaran part of her mind already starting to flick through acceptable options. “And give you an answer in the next scream or two.”

“That’s all I want.” Sasi kisses her bitten lip, right on the wind-scar. “And for what it’s worth, I loved it. And you. And I am glad you showed up when you did. I’m expecting Testolagh to show up before the next scream. I’m wondering where he’s got to. But I did want to talk to the two of you about how things are going and check about Aiko’s living arrangements for the next year. I’d like to take all of Wood off, you see.”

Keris’s eyes widen with interest. “I’d been planning to come back here for Wood next year, along with Zanara,” she murmurs thoughtfully. “Spend some time with Lilunu outside of Calibration, work on Sorcery, that sort of thing.”

“Oh, that has real possibility,” Sasi says. “And if you need someone to cover for you in Saata, I can pretend to be you if you need. I’ve heard a lot about the pleasures and wickedness of Saata while I was in An Teng. That sounds like an enjoyable holiday for me.”

Keris smirks. “It’s my kind of city. And you’ll love what I’ve done with the place. Alright, we can talk about that later.” She frowns suddenly. “Ah... Testolagh didn’t hear about our, um, performance, did he?”

“I haven’t seen him yet, so... I suspect he will have,” Sasi says tactfully.

A sinking feeling overtakes Keris, and she winces.

This isn’t going to be fun.

* * *

Testolagh shows up late - almost at the time of the scream, and there’s very little chance to say anything. Fortunately, what he does say doesn’t... uh, mention certain things. At all. Even if she can read him, and she knows he knows. Instead, he gives a fuller description of the small far South West island he seized at the head of a band of pirates joined by Calesco, taking a rocky island with little trade that had previously been a pirate cove. 

“Calesco suggests that it might be an idea to base the owlriders there,” he tells Keris. “She says the air currents from the volcano makes them good for lift-off, and as scouts they can keep an eye on the sea lanes without them getting out of shape.”

She nods cautiously. “I’ll want to see it first, but a flight corps on the southern trade routes to keep track of who’s going where would be useful,” she agrees. “How goes the army?”

“I’ve seized the docks on Rua, though they fired them when we attacked. I’ve been working on getting them repaired.” His eyes are lingering on Keris, she notices - more than usual. And though it’s hard to tell from the lighting, he has a certain pinkness to his cheeks. “My thought is that it would be best to focus on controlling the pirate fleet harbours. You mentioned on the boat ride here something about Ca Map?”

“Yes.” She speaks briskly, and can feel her cheeks flushing. Hopefully her skin tone hides it, because ordering the treacherous things to stop still isn’t working. “From, uh... f-from what Haneyl tells me, I can hook the Despot fairly easily with the usual blandishments, then use him as a puppet ruler. The Shogunate weapons of that city were enough to break a Realm fleet; once they’re in our control we have a lot more options for setting up a powerbase the Navy can’t touch and denying them any routes south.  Not just the Realm.  The Zu Tak, too.

“And-” There’s a pause from everyone, as the scream of the tomescu echo across the lands, raising even over the noise of the demons revelling outside. Keris winces, and waits for it to be over. Once the noise falls back to its usual levels, she makes a cutting gesture with her hand.

“It’ll have to wait,” she says with an attempt at an apologetic tone that comes out more as relief about having an excuse to escape the awkwardness. “I have a meeting with Unquestionable Lilunu, and her schedule is busy enough that I can’t risk being late. Oh- the twins are playing with Aiko, so you’ll have to pry Kali off again.” There’s enough Ligerian fire in Testolagh that Kali reacts to him as enthusiastically as she did to Ney - a lesson learned when he first arrived in Silver Lotus.

Sasi rises, and sees Keris out. She leans down to kiss her on the lips. “Try not to get in any more fights with our peers,” she chides Keris, tapping her on her nose.

“I will do my best,” Keris promises with a grin, “but if Naan gets wind of my newfound popularity and feels insecure, I can’t be held accountable.”

Punching Naan in the face would be a nice way to relieve some of the embarrassment right now, she can’t help but think. Unfortunately, he’s probably too drunk to have heard yet, and isn’t likely to be en-route to Lilunu anyway.

Sasi kisses her again. “I love you,” she says, wrapping her arms around her before sending her on her way.

Keris slips out away from the entrance, leaping the fence and stepping backstage so people don’t look for her. She runs past the parties and the celebrations, pausing to return to reality until she’s let past the brass-clad soldiers and admitted to see Lilunu.

As is not unusual for these moments when Keris squeezes time with Lilunu at Calibration, she’s made time for Keris when she’s changing outfits. She’s half-way out of a shimmering dress made of snake-scales when she sees Keris, and she dismisses her servants. “You can help me change and we can talk in private, as I suspect you want,” Lilunu says, waiting for the servants to go. “I wish I could see more of you during this time of year - and your darling souls. How are they?”

“Zanara is very put out about not being able to come for Calibration,” Keris tells her; starting with the youngest and the one she knows Lilunu will want news of the most. “They wanted to come visit you for Wood, actually, but I’m afraid I roped them into a grand performance to fool a Dragonkin. Next year for sure. Vali is determined to be the best big brother he can for the twins and Atiya, and Calesco has been spending time helping Peer Testolagh.”

She smiles fondly. “Haneyl’s been invaluable helping me act as division head - you were right, when you told me that. Rathan’s as charming as ever; he’s been helping keep us under the eyes of House Sinasana. And Eko’s taken some coldblood into her nature, and is having far too much fun playing different roles.”

Helping Lilunu out of the rest of the dress, Keris carefully hangs it up and takes the next down; flicking a finger warningly at Iris when she expels a curious puff of flame and tries to lick it.

“And yourself, my lady? How have you been?”

“Oh, quite well, Keris, quite well.” Her hair lengthens, taking on an indigo hue with white tips like sea-foam, and she sags down upon her dressing room chair, sprawled out with an unladylike lack of care. “I might have to shout at you, Keris. Just a little bit.”

Keris bites her lip. “Is it about Hermione?” she asks guiltily. She’s been anticipating this moment since about an hour after she found the mirror-dragon had hitched a ride with her.

“Yes, Keris.” Lilunu crooks her finger at her, commanding her to put down her dress, and summoning her closer. “It is about her.”

“In, um,” Keris says, obeying, “in my defence, I did not realise she had snuck into my amulet-sanctum until I was already back in Creation, and I’m fairly sure that if I’d tried to send her back, she would have mutinied or poisoned me or both.”

“Keris...” Something drips from her hair. It sizzles on the ground.

“I’m sorry!” Keris yelps, shifting instantly to ‘grovel’. “I’m really sorry, I know I should have sent word back, but she was so _happy_ to be out in Creation with a mirror-world all her own and I was worried that if I sent a Messenger back it might not be secure and I didn’t want her to get in trouble because she only wanted to explore and I know Unquestionable Orabilis is strict about your souls and I didn’t want her to get chained up to stop her ever doing it again and just... not mentioning it seemed like the best way to protect her?”

She glances up nervously as she runs out of babble; eyes pleading.

Lilunu winces in pain, and her left arm spasms, dark veins suddenly visible. She takes a gasping breath. Then the dark veins retreat back to her core, and her hair turns a silvery grey. It’s strange, but she looks even more like Sasi than usual - and there’s already some similarity.

“I... suppose that’s fine, Keris,” she says slowly. A single bead of mercury drips down from the corner of her left eye. “What would you do if I ordered you to bring her back? Be honest.”

Keris hesitates. It’s a slight hesitation, but one that betrays her.

“... would she be safe?” she asks, then winces. “Right, sorry, Unquestionable. Um. I would... I...”

On the one hand, if it’s Lilunu asking, Keris wants to say that of course she’d do it.

On the other... she remembers Lilunu’s fears about Antifasi being chained. Remembers Zanara whispering about Lela, who’s never light and never free.

She couldn’t damn Hermione to that kind of fate. She just... she _couldn’t_. Any more than she could fly.

Keris winces again, her hand going to her temple as a pounding headache forms. “I’d... want to?” she tries. “As... as long as she wouldn’t be punished.”

((Roll me 4 dice, please))  
((2 sux))  
((Oh Keris. More loyal to Lilunu than the other Unquestionable.))  
((... haha. Honestly, Lilunu is Beloved, and Hermione is her daughter so she counts as well. And Lilunu knows Keris has MBD. She may well realise that Keris literally _couldn’t_ do something she saw as betraying Hermione or endangering her safety.))  
((The Yozis kind of shot themselves in the foot on that one.))

Iris rises up out of Keris’s arm, and flutters over to Lilunu. She curls around her neck, and brings her head up to Lilunu’s ear.

Lilunu freezes, her expression profoundly mixed. Then she rises, and brings Keris into a painfully tight hug as red starts to creep into her hair and her eyes for a moment flicker. “I d-don’t know... you would put yourself against... the others if they ordered that be done? For me?” She’s shaking in Keris’s arms.

“You’re clan,” Keris says simply, trying very hard to focus on the words and not the fact that an almost-entirely-naked Lilunu who looks a lot like Sasi is hugging her very tightly, even as she hugs back with arms and hair and tries to comfort her mentor. “Clan and kin. I won’t betray you, _ever_. Even if it... causes me problems.”

“Th-then,” Lilunu manages, voice tight, “... I suppose you don’t know where she’s got to. Maybe she might have hitched away with you, but she f-found her own way out. Would you swear an oath to me that you didn’t steal her away from Hell?”

“I so swear,” Keris says formally. “On my family, and the clan we share. She found a way across the Desert on her own, and nobody knew her route until she was out.” She pauses. “I can also honestly say I don’t know where she is right now, if asked,” she adds, relatively truthfully. She can make _guesses_ , but Hermione is prone to sneaking around in secret, and Keris is well aware she’s done things Keris isn’t aware of over the course of the year.

Lilunu grits her teeth, cupping Keris’s face with her hands. “But,” she says meaningfully, “you would swear an oath that you didn’t _steal_ her from Hell, so I can tell anyone who asks that you did not take her from me?”

Keris nods, understanding her point. “I would, my lady,” she says. “I did not take her from you, and I don’t know her location.”

Lilunu slumps down, shaking. “I d-don’t like lying to them,” she whispers. “It... hurts. To know I’m deceiving them. They made me. I... I love him, Keris. I don’t want to lie to him, but... I love Hermione for all that she resents me and... and she’s _right_ to because I... I can’t make anything healthy.”

Iris exhales an angry, finger-wagging flame shape. It draws a weak chuckle from Lilunu. “Apart from maybe you, Iris.”

“If it helps,” Keris says tentatively, “she seemed healthier, out in Creation. I think it’s been good for her. Maybe just...”

She bites her lip, unsure what to say. Keris has never had any particular issues with lying to her superiors. Or inferiors. Or peers and rivals. Or with lying in general, really.

People like Testolagh make their lives entirely too complicated, in her opinion. Getting hung up about that sort of thing is just wasted energy.

“Maybe just think of it as being able to do your job better if you’re healthy,” she says lamely. “And not getting into a big pointless fight about how you’re getting there.”

“I wish.” Lilunu lets out a pitiful sigh. “You’re so strong, Keris. You... you can do so many things I wish I could. And I remember what you told me about your life before my gift found you.” She rests her hand on her midsection, and there’s a little flare of varicoloured light. “You’ve had to fight for everything.”

“Not just fight,” Keris says on autopilot, eyes going wide as she recognises that gesture. Is there a keter-soul like hers within Lilunu at the moment? She didn’t take a count of Infernals at the Althing boasts - but maybe she should start.

“I... had to lie, too,” she picks up, belatedly remembering what she was saying. “I’m strong now, but I was weak back then. When you’re powerless and trapped in a city full of bigger, richer people, you can’t always face your problems and fight them. You have to hide from things that threaten you, trick or deceive your foes when brute force won’t work. I lived by my wits, not my fighting skills.”

Lilunu lets her head hang, her hair falling in front of her face. “I’m awful at lying,” she admits. “I try, but... I go to pieces in front of the others. I can manage it to other people, but that’s... that’s different.”

Keris purses her lips.

“Well...” she says, “if you’re interested - in purely academic terms - about what some of your princes and princesses do in Creation, so that you can better understand their successes and challenges... I could walk you through the ways I took over the Hui Cha or outwitted the Realm’s magistrates.”

“I would love such reports - but later, Keris,” Lilunu says, peeking out from behind her hair. Like a child, Keris can’t help but feel, after she’s seen Aiko make an identical gesture many times. “Oh, we’ve waited so long and I only have so much time for my next costume change. Can you see that suit of crystalline armour? That’s what I’m wearing for the next ceremony.”

“Oh, wow,” Keris nods, moving over to it. “It’s gorgeous. Oh, and while you get dressed, I did have a report of my own to make. About the Zu Tak. And the chance of a deathlord in the Southwest...”

Keris helps her dress - and uses the chance to give her a scalp-massage and do her hair, too - and as she adjusts the silken sash, Lilunu nods over to her dressing room table. “Oh, I was leaving this for later, but I thought I would get you a gift. Take a look.”

It’s a book - of sorts. Rather, it’s a book of sheer black silk pages, with the words and illustrations painted onto the midnight anhule web. “I thought I’d store some of my thoughts in a book,” she explains. “On the arts of beautification we adore. It’s the first book I’ve written, and I thought it was much prettier that way than Orabilis’s glass books.”

Gleeful sounds come from her assistant as Keris browses through it. Every page is black silk - so thin and sheer as to be transparent when held up on their own - with the words embroidered in beautiful flowing silver Old Realm. There are even illustrations; stitched in so lifelike a style that they seem to be more windows than pictures.

“It’s _beautiful,”_ Keris enthuses. “I’ll take very good care of it. And...” she flips through it quickly, taking in the chapters. “Oh, you even included a section on my painting! Thank you thank you thank you! This will be _perfect_ for trying to make a spell to create lesser versions of it for my spies to make reports with. And Zanara will adore it.” Her mouth twitches. “In fact, I might need to chain it to my desk so it doesn’t get stolen,” she adds, half-serious.

Lilunu claps her hands together. “I expect to see some of the principles of the art therein to be displayed in your own flesh,” she says. “I’ll want to see all of it, Keris. It’s the first full book I’ve written, so keep it safe.”

Keris helps get the breastplate secures, then curtseys deeply. “As my mentor commands,” she says fondly. “I’ll be a very dutiful student; you have my promise.”

Stepping back as the last pieces go on, she looks Lilunu up and down critically. “Hmm,” she says thoughtfully, a smile playing on her lips as she purses them in faux-thought. “It’s gorgeous, but the sash could just use a little...”

Her left hand reaches out and caresses the sash, Iris playing about her fingers. And as the little dragon spreads her wings, the silk _changes;_ colour and material shifting around Keris’s touch and spreading until it’s made up of hair-thin woven amber strands that catch the light and shimmer entrancingly.

With an impish smile, Keris nods. “That matches the armour better,” she says happily. “A gemstone sash for a set of jewelled armour.”

Lilunu’s mouth opens wide. “Keris!” she exhales. “I... I’ve never seen any of my sweet peers do something like that. That... that felt like... like me. When I lose control. Only... under control...”

Keris bounces happily on her heels. “You remember the last chakra-knot I took in? Once Iris unravelled it and I took it in properly, it let me _transmute_ things. Like I did the wall, but with more precision - I can change things between the materials of those Makers I’ve internalised, as well as those of my souls.”

She motions at the sash. “That’s Calesco’s amber. It’ll look beautiful in the light - though be careful not to let it tear; those fibres will be razor-sharp if they break. I’ve been making shrines in Saata with this gift; bedecking them with all kinds of materials I’d’ve had to import from Hell otherwise.” A sharp grin appears. “I’m pretty sure it’d let me corrupt the magical materials of Creation too, if I wanted.”

Iris exhales a smug face, and Lilunu shakes her head in wonder. “You never cease to surprise me - or Sasimana, either. It’s one of the things she loves about you.” She smiles. “Yes, we have talked about you. And it was mostly good. She was very worried about that fight you got in with Kasteen. But I suspect you’ve already talked that over with her.” She pats Keris on the shoulder. “Just... try to get on better with your peers, Keris. I know you and Deveh bicker, and of course you had that break-up with Orange Blossom and... well, I do love you, but you do seem to make enemies.”

Keris ducks her head. “Naan likes me,” she defends herself. “And I was getting on well with Anadala, too.”

“Just... try, Keris. That’s all I ask.” She leans in, and gives her a chaste kiss on the brow. “Now, off to another meeting.” She turns to leave, and pauses. “And by the way, Keris, if you want copies of your little playtime with Sasimana, I can get them for you. It was very cute of you two to entertain everyone like that.”

“Tha-” Keris squeaks, caught off-guard by the sudden subject change into _deepest humiliation_ and going from defensive to dying of embarrassment in a pinpoint turn. “That’s f-fine! I’ll just... um... I’ll let you g-get on with your business!”

She bids her mentor a hasty, respectful goodbye, and then flees before the beautiful older woman can reference anything specific from the... performance.

Yuula, Keris decides. She can go find Yuula. And get very drunk to try and erase that image from her memory, or at least punish her treacherous brain for coming up with it and _still not obeying her commands to stop blushing so much_.

She finds the demon princess in one of the bars within the All-Thing building itself. The air pulses with power. There are several demon princes in here, drinking while they wait for meetings or to see others. Keris recognises Imre, Adorjan’s archer, with his great white jade wings, eyepatch, and bow that - she realises - is all too similar to Calesco’s.

She shudders, and tries not to think of it. 

Yuula is napping at the bar, her head surrounded by empty clay jugs, sitting amidst a pool of mercury that’s slowly growing around her.

“A round for me and for Lady Yuula,” Keris orders, seating herself beside the medic; accepting a fizzing concoction distilled from desert-glass and the leaves of Szoreny. “My lady? I see you’ve been enjoying your winnings.”

She takes some nudging to wake up, and blearily stares up at Keris. “Oh. Huh. ‘S you.” She screws her eyes shut, as something more of her wakes up. “Ha! You took my idea! Didn’t think you’d actually do it!” She breaks out in uproarious laughter, even as she sobs mercury.

Dammit. Keris turns bright red again. “I didn’t... it wasn’t...” she stutters, and hides her face, whimpering. “Can we not talk about that?” she begs plaintively. _“Please?”_

“Don’t see wha’ the big deal is,” Yuula says, rolling her shoulders. She stares down at her drink, swirling it in the hope more could appear. “Back in the day, me an’ Ully would do it every Calibration. ‘Cause that was the one time when Ligier and that bastard Sun weren’t in the sky, so everyone could see us.” She throws the dregs back. “Of course, back then she wasn’t such a shallow bitch and I wasn’t a scarred mess. We were beautiful and young and...” she sighs, gesturing for another drink. “I’d make it rain cinnabar-red petals across the world, for our lover’s bed, and those who ate ‘em would... you know, be better from all illnesses.  And stuff.

She glances at Keris. “Take care of all the good times you have with your girl,” she says bitterly. “When you look back and she’s changed, you’ll wish you'd made all the fun you could.”

Opening her mouth to answer, Keris can’t quite find the words. She nods instead, rather than mention that Sasi’s already changed, in some ways. Before Keris even knew her.

“Fuck the silver moon and fuck the stars,” Yuula mutters, as her drink is refilled. She chugs it down, wincing as her too-violent motion opens old scars from the adamant cuffs around her wrists. “So. What do you want? Someone hurt you just _need_ me to heal?”

“No,” Keris says immediately; well aware of how that would go down. “I just wanted to have a few drinks with you, my lady - and maybe a lesson or two, if you felt like it.”

“Huh.” She downs two drinks in silence, then - swaying slightly - notices something. “What’s that book you got?”

Keris’s arm tightens around it as she blushes again. “It’s from Lilunu,” she admits. “She’s my mentor in artwork and beauty, so sometimes she gives me lessons and things to study.”

Yuula grins. “You want a bet, then? My lessons vs your book. You’re probably wanting to learn the secrets of immortality. Humans always do.” She snorts. “Am I right?”

Keris’s eyes widen, and she bites her lip, hugging the book protectively. Is she willing to lose it should she fail?

... is she so insecure that she thinks she might?

“I suppose you wouldn’t take any other stakes, if it’s a lesson for a lesson, huh?” she asks. Yuula smirks, and Keris sighs. “Thought not.” And now that she’s shown how much she values it, Yuula will probably find a way to get it off her if she backs down. She wouldn’t be able to tell an Unquestionable “no” to her face if Yuula said she wanted it in front of all her peers in the bar right now, after all.

Keris breathes deeply. “Okay. Okay!” Slamming her fist on the bar, she squares her shoulders. “I won’t lose to you! Lilunu gave me this and trusted me to keep it safe, so I’ll win whatever challenge you set me!”

“Ha!” There’s something deeply unpleasant in Yuula’s voice. Does she just want to hurt her because Keris has a girlfriend and this is reminding her of when she had Ululaya, which is something to think about in its own right? “You got guts, girl. You’ll lose, but at least you’re not boring.” 

She sticks her hand into a pocket, and pulls out four stoppered brass vials, held between her fingers. “This one cures blindness,” she says. “This one, regrows an arm. This one, undoes liver failure. And this one, the taste of it brings youth and health once more. Just four of my medicines.

“If, in one week, you can brew all four, you win. And if you can’t, I get that book.” She grins, mercury trails framing her mouth. “Or are you not good enough and think you’ll lose?”

For a moment, Keris hesitates.

But only a moment.

“Ten screams,” she growls, swiping another drink with a hair-tendril and downing it in one shot. “I’ll do it in ten screams, not a week.”

That gets her bared teeth. “Cocky, are we? Well, I’ll take that bet!” She lays the vials out, then taps her drink to Keris’s. “See you in ten screams, then,” she says, downing the drink.

_“Deal.”_

The demon princess essays her a little wave, the snakes around her chuckling. “Well, care to stay for a few more drinks?” she asks in cruel merriment.

Keris looks mutinous, but she can’t refuse. If she leaves now, it’ll be a sign of weakness - an implication that she thinks she’ll need every second of those ten screams to study and pour over the vials and desperately try to replicate them.

Which is admittedly true.

But she remembers Old Calley, and despite the disparity in power between them; the old alchemist and healer she used to know back in Nexus isn’t so different in some ways from this demon princess apothecary. Keris knows without needing to ask, in her bones and in her gut, that Yuula has taken students before. And she knows that they tried to meet her expectations, and prove equal to her demands, and break even with the work she set them.

And one by one, she crushed them all. Either until they burned out and dropped, or turned bitter and hard like her.

No, if Keris is going to _succeed_ as Yuula’s student, she can’t settle for being good enough to measure up to the lessons of the Weeping Handmaiden. She has to _exceed_ them, and make it look effortless.

Which is why, despite every part of her hindbrain screaming at her in panic, she casually crosses her legs and leans on the bar, motioning for another round of drinks.

“Sure,” she agrees with false cheer. “I’m in no hurry.”

She’s going to win this bet even if she has to rip the secrets out of the Silver Forest itself, and then Yuula will _have_ to teach her.

* * *

“So, let me get this straight, Aunty,” Oula says, sitting by Keris as she flips through Lilunu’s book with silken gloves on. “You’ve already wasted half a day drinking with her, you’re going to be missing most of the rest of the Calibration parties due to your self-imposed deadline, and you don’t know how to do this.”

Keris’s workroom in her townhouse is baby-proof, but not catty daughter-in-law-to-be-proof. Acid bubbles in the corner. Burners flicker with green flame. Ice steams from the tanks.

“Shut uuuuup,” groans Keris, clutching at her head. The hangover is as brutal as the last one she suffered after drinking with Yuula. “Just... get Rounen to copy it down, okay? If I do lose - which I won’t! - I don’t want to have _nothing_ to show for it. And Yuula only bet that specific book.”

Oula sniffs. “He is in the baths, with Kuha. Again. It’s disgusting. I was going to take a bath with Rathan since he’s looking a little hungover from the parties and I want to take care of him while making it clear he deserves to suffer for not taking me.” She turns the page. “And... I don’t know. This is beautiful. Maybe I should focus on this, rather than on the sorcery. I’m not sure...” she trails off.

“Hey!” Keris snaps, rapping her hand with a stirring rod without looking up. “You’ll do both, and you’ll _excel_ at both, because you’re _my student_. And also future daughter-in-law. Got it? No putting yourself down.”

Oula looks up at her, clearly uncomfortable. “But... I’m not one of your souls. I’m... just a serf, like I heard someone say at a party.” She scowls. “ Of course, I put mercury in that _bitch’s_ drink, let me tell you that. But... maybe... your first student should be Rathan. Or maybe Haneyl, but really Rathan.”

That makes Keris look up. Look up, and despite the pounding in her head, get up and kick a stool across to sit in front of the younger girl.

“Oula,” she says seriously. “Listen to me. Okay? If you learn one thing from me, just one; let it be this: _you will never get any power or safety in the world if you accept the place it makes for you_.” She squeezes hard to underline the statement. _“Ever_. You get me? Understand this - of all my students in sorcery right now; out of Rathan and Haneyl and Yuu and even Hermione; _you’re_ the one closest to achieving it right now. You’ve journeyed. You’ve been humbled. You’ve mastered what I’ve taught you. You’ve faced your fears.”

Grey eyes lock onto crimson and silver. “And now you’re facing a choice,” Keris says; more gently but still relentless; still not giving Oula any slack. “And it’s scary. I know it’s scary. I’ve done it twice, and it’s _terrifying_. You don’t know what life will be like if you take that last step. You don’t know what will change. It’s a door you can only go through once, and the other side is dark.”

A hair tendril fetches her a notepad, and she sketches on it; quick and sure. Sorcerous notation - a Salinan proof that describes a spell she’s never taught her students. A spell she made herself; the Wave-and-Fire Rite that lets a human and a demon cast off their natures and become something else; the union of two beings in one. She leaves it incomplete; a missing gap in the equations that took her weeks to fill when she was struggling to create this working, and turns the pad around to face her student.

“I can’t tell you what to choose,” she says simply. “I can only make you admit this. That door; that choice - that wall you’re butting up against. Is it _good_ for you, Oula? Or is it _holding you back?”_

Slowly, unstoppably, she pries Oula’s fretting hands open and puts the ink-brush in them.

((OK, Per + Expression, let’s see if your pep talk can give her the courage to help her make the decision. And I will roll her willpower.))  
((Hee. 4+5+3 Prince of Hell+2 stunt x2 Hidden Depths Temptress {“make a choice”}=14. Haha, 10x2= _20 successes_.))  
((And she got, on WP...))  
(([ **10 9 7 7** 6 6 5 5 3]))  
5 successes. Niiiiice. : D))  
((Yep, that was enough for her to take the next step and Awak... I mean, initiate into Sorcery.))

Oula swallows. Her silver pupils contract. And then they open wide, wide, until they nearly take up her whole eye.

“Of course,” she says simply. “I... I love him.” She balls her fists. “But loving him doesn’t mean I can’t be _better_ than him.” She looks Keris in the eye. “You chose me as your pupil, Aunty. You said I was ready. So I’m ready. I... I don’t have to hold myself back anymore. I _can_ do anything I want. And if I try and I fail, I’ll just have to find another way.

She lets out a soft sigh. “I can see it all, Aunty,” she says dreamily, even as her pupils contract again. “It’s beautiful. You made this. A way for a human to take the power of a demon. And for a demon to take a human’s form, its place in the world.” 

And then she bursts into tears.

Setting the incomplete proof aside; its purpose served, Keris gathers her student - her _student!_ \- into her arms and soothes her. The first glimpse of the world after opening your eyes again is always a bit traumatic, she knows. It’s not quite a Third Breath - for both Keris and Oula have had a First and a Second - but it’s not far off. Everything is different, and comes with the knowledge that it’ll never quite be the same again.

“I’m sorry, Aunty,” Oula mumbles into her. “I... I don’t know why I’m crying. It’s just...”

“I know,” Keris hums to her. “I know. I’ve been there too, remember. It’s okay. I’m proud of you.”

She lets out a little burble that’s almost a giggle, almost a sob. “No... no wonder Rathan and Haneyl haven’t managed this. It’s... well, it’s a big change. I... I wonder if we’ll be better at learning it. Keruby, I mean. We’re used to thinking differently and growing up.”

Keris smiles. “Well then, I suppose you’ll be the one to found the school,” she suggests. “You can work on it whenever you go back to the Domain with Rathan for a season or so.”

“It’s your school, Aunty,” Oula says. She swallows. “I’m just your disciple.”

“Then you can run it for me,” Keris smiles. She thinks of Salina, and huffs a soft laugh. Her mentor would probably get a kick out of her first student being Oula. Not one of her souls, not another Exalt - a First Circle. One of the masses, with a heart too big to remain meek.

“Now, get that book copied out and go over your studies of the Messenger. And think about what you’re going to use as a conduit. Now that you’re a sorceress, I’m going to make use of you, young lady!”

Oula smiles a little smile. “Is this just you making sure I’m too busy to get pregnant?” she asks.

Keris gives her the eyeball. “It’s a bit of both,” she says warningly. “Now, scoot! I have alchemy to do.”

Oula bows. “Yes, teacher,” she says, taking the book. “As you wish.”


	3. Chapter 3

Vitriol bubbles. Occult flames hiss under vessels of brass and glass and silver - not just the green fires of hell, but strange flames that flicker and shift and cast opalescent light. A half dozen beakers of blood line one countertop; bright red mixed through with quicksilver swirls. Mortars full of strange powders dot the bench next to them, and thick pastes and oozes squirm against the inside of sealed jars along a line of shelves.

Scents and sounds fill the air with alien texture. The acrid sharp tang of vitriol mixes with metallic blood-scent and the sweet perfume of cinnabar petals. A sickeningly rotting undertone leaves an unpleasant aftertaste on the tongue. Carefully calibrated flames snap and hiss, the bubble and trickles of liquids moving along thin pipes sounds almost musical, and two voices confer in low murmuring tones. Arcane secrets of health and vigour and eternal youth are being plumbed in this strange laboratory, and its mistress has long since lost track of time when she hears the door click behind her, and soft steps sashay in. High heels click against the stone floor and a scanty silk dress slinks against her skin.

“Keris,” the visitor says from the doorway. “Where did you get to? You left the twins with me and then I find you here! I thought we had a party together tonight!”

At Sasi’s entrance, Keris jumps and jerks her head round belatedly - a reaction that speaks to how absorbed she was; to miss her love’s approach until she was past the door and well within her space. A little bit of her brain notes that Sasi still uses the word ‘tonight’. She’s been chosen by Hell even longer than Keris, but such things are hard to shake.

“I did?” she asks. “We do? Wait, no...” She shakes her head, glancing back at the glass test tube she’s been poring over; decanted from a small brass vial. There’s less of it than she started with; drop by careful drop sacrificed to different attempts at analysis and replication.

“Double the mercury content and let it simmer,” she orders Oula, who nods demurely and sets to work. She’s not an alchemist of Keris’s skill, but this is art done with mercury - it’s similar enough that she can do the menial work that needs only nimble hands and a basic knowledge of the equipment.

Keris herself turns the rest of the way to face her lover. “Sorry Sasi,” she says. “It’ll have to wait. I kind of screwed myself over and now I’m, uh...”

She gestures vaguely at the humming workshop.

“... busy. And on a time limit.”

Sasi doesn’t stop her approach, draping herself over Keris. She smells, Keris realises, somewhat drunk. And she’s been with Testolagh. “Aww, come on, dear one,” she slurs slightly. “That’s no fun.” She pouts like a child, rubbing herself up against Keris’s silk dress. “You know what is more fun?” Her hand rubs against the small of Keris’s back.

“... what?” Keris asks nervously, which is not what she’d _meant_ to say. She’d _meant_ to quip something like ‘not losing a bet with an Unquestionable’ and shoo Sasi out of her lab before the evidently-rather-drunk woman can talk her into anything.

Dammit, she’s really going to have to find a way to punish her brain if it keeps betraying her like this.

Pulling a face, Sasi scoots to perch up on Keris’s workbench, her loose robe riding up to expose reaches of pale thigh. “You’re being really unfun today,” she says sulkily. “Kiss me.”

Keris can _hear_ Oula roll her eyes.

“Sasi, I...” Keris stutters, hands drifting to caress Sasi automatically, rubbing up her thigh just high enough to tease before retreating again. “I’m _busy,_ I got myself sucked into a bet with Yuula; if I don’t learn what she’s asked for I’m screwed. Can we... just... later? Please?”

The plea loses some impact from the way she doesn’t actually stop touching Sasi or try to push her away.

Sasi might be drunk, but she’s also very curious. “Oh, Keris, what did you do now?” she sighs. She blinks owlishly. “Do you need help? I can always make time for you if you need my help, my tiny and adorable love.” She giggles, and puffs herself up, trying to look serious. 

It’s a reminder, a cold and somewhat distant bit of Keris’s mind notices, of how generous and large and giving Sasi’s heart is. The less cold and distant part of her mind is noticing more that Sasi wandered over here only wearing a short thin robe, loosely belted, and it’s open enough that she can see what else is also large and generous and lies above aforementioned heart.

“I... I don’t need help,” Keris stutters, then sighs. “I just... Yuula offered to teach me something and then roped me into a bet that I could master four of her medicines in a week, or give up the book Lilunu gave me. Her first one she ever wrote. And then I kind of got pissed and told her I’d do it in ten screams. And then wasted one of them drinking with her to show I wasn’t panicked about it or anything.”

“Even though you were,” Oula puts in. A lock of hair whip-cracks at her, and she hastily goes back to minding the burner. Keris shrugs.

“So now I’ve got eight screams to figure out four magical remedies, and I’m making progress on the first one but it’s slow going and I need to put everything into this or I’m not gonna make the deadline. And I really, really need to make the deadline.”

Sasi huffs. “No wonder you get along with her,” she says sulkily. “You both make terrible bets.” She crosses her legs. “Now, are you planning on sleeping at all, or are you going to just shut yourself in here and waste all of Calibration?”

“... uh,” says Keris, because she gets the impression that ‘um, the second one’ isn’t the right answer. Or at least isn’t the answer Sasi would consider so.

“Well, I refuse to let you shut yourself away and stay up for four days, inhaling mercury fumes! You’ll go mad! Madder than you are for wasting all this chance for fun.” She looks over at Keris, heartbreakingly winsome eyes wobbling. “I hardly got to see you all year. And now you’re in here, and I’ll have to leave soon, and then it’ll be back to the Realm for me and... and...”

((8 successes on compelling Keris to offer to make it up to her, UMI, playing off Keris’s principle of being Sasi’s loving protector.))

Keris bites her lip, looks over at her workbench, and then back at Sasi. She’s silent for a long moment.

“... two screams,” she says eventually. “I can give you two screams, Sasi, but that’ll be cutting it to the _absolute razor edge,_ and if anything unexpected comes up this will _fuck_ me, you get me? Please - I know you’re good at talking me into things, but _please_ don’t try to get me to stay past that. You probably could, and then I’d lose this bet and hurt Lilunu and Yuula will never teach me anything, ever again.” She stares into Sasi’s eyes, letting her sincerity burn. “Promise me?”

“No, no, no,” Sasi says, looking her in the eye. “I know that’s important to you. I’ll be around sometimes to make sure you get some sleep, or I might just get Haneyl to do it. But if you really want to make it up to me,” she bites a lip slowly, “well, no one says we can’t have a party of our own when this is all over. A very, very exclusive one. It’s just I’ve missed you. So, so much.”

That draws a smile. “That sounds good, yeah,” Keris agrees. “And I’ve had a few ideas about the kind of thing I’m willing to do for that performance in the Street of Golden Lanterns.”

“And, well,” Sasi continues, a smile on her lips, “I’ve been talking with Tessie. And he and you have been getting on better and Aiko adores both of you - she’s been wondering where Aunty Keris has been, just like the twins - and, well.” She leans in, the alcohol on her breath tickling Keris’s nostrils. “He’d be willing to share me with you for one special night. As a Calibration present for me, before I have to go away again and barely see you two all year. Just me, you and him.” She kisses Keris on the nose. “Please?”

Again, Keris hesitates. Testolagh... well, there have been a few moments, and physically there’s potential there, but he’s not really her type...

... but if it’s a special present for Sasi, well.

She kisses Sasi back. “Whatever you want,” she agrees. “We’ll make it extra special for you.”

Sasi wraps her arms around her shoulders. “It’ll be wonderful,” she breaths. “And since you’re so busy, I’ll handle the side of things with keeping the Street of Golden Lanterns happy. I’m thinking... well, there’s a genre of short opera in the Realm which are meant to be things warning people about the evils of sin and vice and demons. Which are things we’re both _rather_ into. And both of us can sing and dance and between me and you, we can make up a whole orchestra and cast. You can do your beautiful veil dance and I’ll be some poor innocent woman of the Realm lured into wicked decadence.” She hiccups. “I’ve heard rumour that the demon princes find twistings of the Immaculate plays to be hilarious.”

Keris smirks. It appeals to her, too. “Oh, Sasi, love,” she murmurs, hugging her. “You always do come up with the _best_ ideas.”

That produces another giggle. “I’ll deal with Ipithymia and you deal with Yuula. But I’ll take on the greatest burden. Keeping the twins entertained while mama does silly things with mercury.”

A wince. “Yeah. Thank you for that. And my deep, deep sympathies.” Keris brushes a kiss across her cheek, and glances at her workbench again. “Oh!” she adds, remembering something. A quick hunt around finds a little glass spray bottle, and she drops it in Sasi’s hands. “Aiko was asking about perfume,” she explains. “So I made her this. It’ll shift in scent as she wears it to suit her mood - mostly florals and some spices. Not much of it, but I think she’ll find it fun.”

Sasi sprays some on her wrist. “Oh, very childish,” she observes, and winces. “I’ll have to keep it away from surfaces that Kali can knock it off of. Well. You want to come and give me an extended goodbye kiss, while we leave your faithful assistant working? It’ll help clear your head.”

With a nod and a few more orders to Oula concerning their attempts on the other vials, Keris follows her out. The cool air of the corridors is a shock to the system after the steamy heat of her workroom. The noise of Hell is much louder with the clanging of gongs and fireworks and other forms of revelry away from Keris’s soundproofed workroom, but the air is much cleaner.

“Well,” Sasi breaths, kneeling, “since time is of the essence, we don’t really have time to go find a bedroom, do we?” She runs her hands up Keris’s dress, rolling it up to her waist. “So we’ll kiss goodbye. And maybe I’ll use some tongue.”

It is a pleasant distraction.

It’s maybe a quarter of an hour later when a mussed Keris slinks back into her workroom, her silk dress torn at the seams and with dust on it from where it was used as an impromptu thing to rest on. She coughs, and puts her mind back to alchemy.

Oula doesn’t say anything. Loudly. Not until, “You humans are weird. And Sasimana gives her heart away to all-comers.” The disdain is clear in her voice. “She says she loves you, but she wants to share you with someone else. At the same time.” Keris hears the muttered, “Not really love.”

Keris gives her a withering eye. “It’s not your kind of love,” she says. “But she does love me. Sasi has a big heart, and...” her face twists, “while I’m not totally happy about it, I accept that she can love many people. And that it doesn’t make her love for me any less.”

There’s a pause.

“... even if I do want to punch Testolagh sometimes,” she admits.

“You should carve out his heart and crush it under foot,” Oula advises, woman to woman. Her pupils are not heart-shaped; they’re little silver knives. “That way he won’t get in the way. It makes me _sick_ to watch her drag you into _sharing_ the woman you love!”

Keris sighs. Oula’s certainly grown bold from their closeness. Bold and mouthy. The steam of the laboratory swirls around her; hair gently coiling and twisting in the air as she regards her student.

Her student. It’s still a little strange to think of Oula like that. Oh, she’s been so for a while, but now... now she’s a sorceress. Part of Keris’s lineage; another link in the chain that was passed to her by Salina. A legacy.

She’s starting to fidget now, and Keris realises she’s been staring - perhaps a little severely - for too long without replying. Now Oula thinks she’s angered her teacher - which isn’t really true. There’s a hint of frustration and irritation, but she speaks out of concern and according to her nature. Hastening to correct her error, Keris opens her mouth and says the first thing that comes to mind.

“You need a name.”

“Aunty, I have a name. It’s Oula.” At least that’s enough of a surprise for her to blink her pupils back to roundness.

Keris shakes her head, the thoughts assembling in her head with a kind of hurried clumsiness, as if embarrassed that they missed their cue, hoping nobody will notice them sneaking in and taking their places.

“Not that one. You’re a sorceress now. You’re part of a lineage; a smaller family within the bigger one. You need a second name. A sorceress’s name. Something that ties you to your art, that’s more than just you and you alone.”

“Well, I’ll take Rathan’s family name when _you let us get married_ ,” she says reasonably-in-her-eyes. Opalescent light from a burner plays across her face from below.

Keris flicks her on the nose.

“That will have nothing to do with your sorcery,” she chides. “Your Station of Choice was accepting you can be more than just tied to him. Pick something for _you_.”

Oula puts down the mortar and pestle, with a sigh. “Aunty,” she says. “Do you remember the first time we met? Well, the second. Both of them, really. But more the time you summoned me back in Taira.”

A smile curls the edge of Keris’s mouth. “You looked adorable in your make-up,” she teases. “Yes, I remember.”

Her cheeks redden. “Yes. But I was a kid. A... a feral kid, honestly, who ran around bossing around the kids in my gang. I was the boss partly because I was good at fighting and partly because I knew how to keep everyone pointed in about the right direction, and beat the crap out of anyone who got uppity. And I spent my time trying to impress Rathan. All the gang bosses wanted to get his attention. He made me a general because I was the only one who got basic ideas like having half my gang hide so they’d advance and then the others would jump out on them.” She swallows. “And then there was the make-up and... Aunty. Can you really see the kid I was in me now? You keep on making me more than I used to be, but I look back at who I was, a dumb kid who was obsessed with justice, and now... I don’t really recognise her. And she wouldn’t recognise me.” Her pink hair knots itself; she wrings her hands together. “How am I meant to know who I am? To know what’s right for me?”

She’s right, Keris realises with surprise. She’d been a feral gang kid when they’d met - oh, a cute one with a crush, sure, but still. And now she’s a beautiful young woman; an occultist and a student of the arts who covers Rathan’s weaknesses and who Keris will be proud to call ‘daughter’ someday.

... and she’s not just talking about Oula, is she? If Keris looks back at herself before learning Sorcery; the Hell-Chosen street rat who’d brought death to Matasque and sought cold revenge in Nexus...

What is there left of that girl in her now?

She’d taken “Dulmeadokht” before her Emerald Sacrifice, but she hadn’t lived it until accepting herself as a princess. She’d walked away from Taira with ‘Maryam’ in her name, because her mother had been the one to open her eyes and force her through the trials. Nobody had named her, and so she’d named herself inexpertly; scrabbling for meaning in the identities of those who’d been crucial to her new way of looking at the world.

She doesn’t regret it. She’s grown into the roles. Keris Maryam Dulmeadokht is who she is, and she’s happy as that woman.

But what might it have done for her if Salina had given her a proper way to explore her new identity? One tailored to who _she_ was, to her future, not her past?

“... you’re right,” she murmurs, smiling. She’s heard once that teachers learn from their students as much as the other way around. It had never quite made sense before today. Resting a hand on each of Oula’s shoulders, she brushes a kiss against her forehead.

_**“Oula Montressa, I name you,”**_ Keris says, and the words have the quiet, resonating weight of sorcery behind them. _**“For the moon-dipped tresses that hold your power, and the ways of mercury and growth you use to shape it.”**_

“Montressa,” Oula says, tasting the word. She smiles. “Ha! Take that, Rounen! Also Yuu! Especially Yuu! I’m the first kerub with a special name.” She giggles. “Maybe I should make Rathan take my name,” she says, sounding like a naughty schoolgirl.

That gets her another flick on the nose, and an amused look. “You’re not a sorceress in full until you’ve mastered a spell,” Keris points out. “Get that under your belt before you start gloating. And don’t mention that idea to Rathan, or he’ll pass a law... saying... you...”

Her smile freezes on her face.

“... _shit!”_ she curses. “Shit shit shit, what am I _thinking,_ this is a disaster!” Her wild eyes catch Oula’s. “You’re a _First Circle sorceress_ in _Hell_. That’s in direct violation of Cecelyne’s law! The Priests will _murder_ you if they find out - and if Orabilis sees you, you’ll be thrown into the sky!”

Oula pales under her tan skin. “I don’t suppose this is the kind of sky-throwing you could catch me from?” she checks. “No. I don’t think so. You wouldn’t be so worried if it was. Um. What do we do, Aunty?”

Keris tugs at a hair tendril distractedly. “Fuck, um...” She paces, antsy and nervous. “Right. Yeah. Okay, yeah, safest thing is for you to get back home. I’ll call you out when we’re back out in Creation, but it’s too dangerous for you to be here otherwise.”

“Except then you’ll be doing your alchemy alone,” Oula points out. “I’ve been speeding things up for you. You need me to stay out at least until you win the bet.” She stays firm and resolute in the face of Keris’s glare. Brave. Or perhaps foolish.

Still, Keris can’t deny her point. “Fine,” she says. “Then you stay indoors. No going out, no going near the shrine, no demonstrating or practicing sorcery around anyone of Hell. And the _second_ we’re done, you come back inside for your own safety. Clear?”

Oula nods, and swallows. “That... that also means I have to be very careful around your boat,” she says carefully. “Or any other hellish demons. Or Asarin.”

“It does,” Keris nods gravely. “And do your best to avoid even being _seen_ by the Eyes of Orabilis. I don’t know how well he can pick up on lawbreaking just from laying his gaze on someone, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was within his power. Obviously there are limits to it,” she gestures to herself wryly, “but let’s not put it to the test.”

After a moment, she lets out a half-sigh, half-chuckle. “It figures,” she adds, “that you’d learn my habit of doing things that will get you in deep trouble if anyone in power finds out about them, as well as the more official lessons.”

With a flick of her hair, Oula snorts. “Well, Aunty,” she says, cracking her knuckles. “Fuck that.” An ugly sneer crosses her face. “No _wonder_ all the demons here are trapped and useless when their stupid laws pass over power like this.” She holds out her hand, faint red and silver sparkles forming there. The beautiful tattoos covering her shoulders glow crimson from within. “And that’s why keruby are just plain better than the worthless demons of Hell. You don’t need them when you’ve got us!”

Dulmea lets out a piteous moan. “Oh no. Not more like that. Child, why are your keruby just as awful as you and your souls are?”

And all Keris can do in response is laugh. Laugh, until the task at hand drags her back into her desperate work to beat the ticking clock.

* * *

It’s an awful Calibration for Keris, locked up here in the dark with mercury fumes and Oula to keep her company, but she’s had worse. She’s not sleeping rough in Firewander while hobgoblins look for children’s souls to eat. Haneyl and Sasi each venture into the depths to drag her out and force her to eat and sleep. And since things are going somewhat better than expected and she makes sure to let Oula nap when not much is happening, her disciple is fresh enough that she can carry on the work while Keris has a bath.

Her head’s still spinning from mercury fumes and her blood feels heavy and cool in her veins from how much she’s ingested from self-testing. But this is it. The test.

She mixes together ground charcoal, sulphurous compounds and her own blood, heating them together until they form a thick sludge, then shaping the black mess into a pill.

“Here goes,” she mutters, and pulls out Ascending Air, opening a gaping, bleeding wound along the back of her right arm. She gasps, head reeling, and pinches it shut to stop the bleeding. But there’s still an ugly wound from wrist to elbow.

She pops the pill in her mouth, and swallows.

It feels like someone’s scraping hooks inside her flesh. She grunts, and slams her arm into the table, trying not to scream. And when the pain is gone, so is the ugly livid wound. There’s still hurt inside, she needs time to heal, but the skin is unmarred.

“Well, how about that?” Oula says, as she carefully dries up Keris’s mercury-rich blood to save for her own work.

Keris grins a bloody, mercury-stained grin. “And _that’s four, bitch_ ,” she snarls, pain still ricocheting through her. There’s dizzy nausea too, and her hands shake from the amount of quicksilver she’s imbibed. Still, she’s done it. And with a few hours to spare, even. Enough to get cleaned up and looking her best before going to meet Yuula, so that she can play the whole thing off as effortless.

First, though, she has to deal with the little matter of being poisoned.

“Pass me the extra silverdraught we made,” she orders, and Oula hands over the little vial. Keris downs it gratefully, and sighs as the shakes and lightheadedness fade away. “Okay,” she smiles. “And now we are going to the baths, and getting me cleaned up and looking my best to _shove it in Yuula’s face_ that I succeeded. You can take a nice long bath and pamper yourself while I go meet with her, then return to the domain when I get back.”

Oula cracks her knuckles and her hair. “I’m going to see where Rathan is. I’m just _so_ cramped up and aching from sitting here working over a flame for so long. And my arms are tired. I need his help to wash my back,” she says, with false patheticness that almost reminds Keris of Sasi. Maybe it's from Sasi. After all, she was here to watch her display - and Oula has always been very good at learning tricks from Keris.

“Just remember,” Keris orders flatly, “you do not leave this estate. If he’s not here for you to find; if he’s out in Hell somewhere, you wait for him to get back. Understand?”

“I know,” Oula says, hunching up her shoulders. “You explained what the stars are here. They’re not like the ones back home. They’re _evil_. No one should punish a demon for reaching above their station! That’s what stations are there for! To exceed!”

Keris smiles, and kisses her forehead. “Good girl,” she whispers. “Just remember to be smart about it. And don’t let anyone here know.”

“In a few days’ time,” Oula whispers back, “I’ll be back in Creation and they’ll be locked up here. Who’ll be laughing then?”

Keris has a grin on her face as she heads out. She really does love that girl.

* * *

She finds Yuula in the spectacle box of the fighting pits, watching Naan tear into a great boar-like monster with too many legs. There’s already the smeared bodies of lesser demons spread across the arena - a leg there, a chest here, an acid-scourged skeleton halfway out of the bubbling green pits. The great drums pound like a heartbeat, and with each punch flame-jets shoot up from the station walls.

“No, you fucking stupid pig!” Yuula screams, slamming her staff into the ground. The stone splinters. “Gore him! Gore him!”

“My lady,” Keris greets her, appearing beside her with a book tucked under her arm and an artfully downcast expression on her face. “We had a bet going? It’s been ten screams.”

“Ha!” Yuula kicks her snakes out of one of the seats, and pats the chair with a grotesquely mock-maternal manner. “Come in, sit down, have some wine!” As Keris watches, another snake slithers from one of the withered cinnabar-red blossoms in her dark hair.

Keris sits, and drinks. Her hesitance is a performance; a facade of trying to put off admitting a failure for as long as possible. She’s going to enjoy playing this winning hand. Yuula’s grin widens, showing mercury-rotted teeth. Were they better before? Keris can’t recall. “So you’re here to concede and give me my book?” she asks, toasting Keris. The adder-eye bindi on her brow blinks.

Meekly, Keris reaches into a pocket of her gown and takes out four stoppered brass vials, each as full as when Yuula gave them to her. She sets them out on the table in front of the Unquestionable, alongside the book.

And then, as a grinning Yuula reaches to claim her prize, Keris reaches into her other pocket, and takes out four glass vials.

With four little clinks, she matches vial to vial, and grins.

_“Ten screams_ ,” she boasts. “I told you I could do it.”

Yuula freezes. Carefully, with hands that are steady even though she’s a drunken mess, she takes the nearest of Keris’s vials and breaks it open, sniffing it. “Hmm. Little too much charcoal. The healed limb will ache in wet weather.” She tries the next one, coming up with little criticisms for each one. “Far from perfect,” she says. “But still you thought you’d come here and challenge one of the demon princes with your silly little game?”

“I won _your_ game,” Keris says, instinct warning her against backing down. “You didn’t say get them as perfect as yours; you said replicate them. And I did. So yeah, I thought I’d play a little game of my own.” She grins, and if there’s an edge of nerves to it, she hides it well. “And now you owe me a lesson.”

“The demon princess glances over at the book. She pulls a face. “A lesson. Yeah? Okay.” She delicately pours herself more blood-red wine. “I think I’ve just taught you to grant men eternal life and heal the maimed and sick,” she says over the brimming-full bowl, face shaped by the silvery streams of mercury from her eyes.

There’s a pause, while Keris gapes at her.

“... wait, no, but...” she says after a moment. “No, that... that was the _bet!_ You can’t do that!” Her composure is gone, in favour of indignation. “That’s _cheating!”_

Yuula downs half her bowl. “Would you have learned this without me?” she inquires. There's an aristocratic little smirk playing on her lips; smug and spiteful.

Keris’s mouth works soundlessly, before she gives up and fumes. “You are _infuriating_ ,” she accuses. But her mouth is twitching slightly. She’s pissed, but she can admit that while Yuula lost the bet, she won the bonus round. That was sneaky.

“Life isn’t easy, and there’s no such thing as a free gift. Think of it as me teaching you,” Yuula says, before drinking again. “Now, shoo. You’ve been some fun little amusement while I... oh come on, you fucking useless pig, I had a gold statue riding on you!” Down in the arena below, Naan is beating the boar monster over the head with its own leg. Keris notes with some pride that he isn’t getting as much cheers as she was. “Yeah, well, this day is ruining itself after this amusement.” She glances harshly at Keris. “So unless you and your lady friend are willing to give me another public spectacle, scram.”

Keris goes bright red and almost drops Lilunu’s book on her foot. That was a low blow - and Yuula knows it. She was never going to let her get away unscathed. But Keris rallies admirably. “We might be,” she shrugs, with an attempt at casual unconcern that is, okay, yes, absolutely terrible. “Ipithymia invited us to perform for her. I’ll make sure you get sent an invitation when we decide a time for it.”

She retreats before Yuula can capitalise on her embarrassment any further. She’ll take what wins she can get.

* * *

Of course, fortune is not so kind. As Keris runs home at a full on-sprint, she is a little distracted. She’s worried about Yuula and thinking about what she’ll do with this new trick and maybe thinking a bit about Sasi and the play and...

Well. She’s jarred from her distracted sprint when she runs head-long into someone who she could _swear_ hadn’t been there half a second ago.

She falls, and lands heavily on her bottom. Her head is aching from where their skulls collided.

“Ow,” a male voice says. Demonic flame burns in the skies above from the revelry, and stars fall in wondrous displays.

Keris glances over to see who she ran into, still clutching her book to her chest. It’s a young man, with coal black, spiky hair, dressed in a simple white coat and black trousers. His eyes meet hers, and the world goes slightly soft and fuzzy.

She recognises the man, the fuzziness and the source all in the same instant, and laughs nervously to cast off the venom’s mind-numbing influence, rubbing the back of her head. “Unquestionable Balanodo,” she greets Asarin’s Greater Self, picking up her book and climbing back to her feet. “My deepest apologies; I should have been looking where I was going. I hope I didn’t hurt you?”

He’s already on his feet, rubbing his own head. “It’s... uh, quite all right.” He sounds nervous, though in an oddly charming way. “Peer Keris,” he says, offering her his hand. “Where did you come from out of nowhere?”

“Oh, I was just coming from meeting Lady Yuula,” Keris says, clutching the book to her chest and shaking his hand with a careful hair tendril rather than her bare skin. She’ll have to clean that before letting it touch her again. “She was at the... uh... arena...”

Too late, she remembers that he’d been there. And seen the... display that she and Sasi had put on. Her cheeks, which had been fading back to their natural colour after Yuula’s taunts, go bright red again.

He blushes too, not as intensely as her, but still enough that it seems to somehow moderate your own embarrassment. “I saw the fight, yes,” he says. He squares up to her protectively. “Did you have to hurt Kassie that bad? She’s not a bad girl! She’s just been treated badly by her precious people in the past. And you were acting like the villain!” The scent of ink and cold blood is overpowering up close. She can hear the drip-drip-drip of unclosed wounds. And this youth, this barely bearded boy who looks a year or two younger than her, is a rival. An equal. There’s no envy in him, but what there is is the roar of ten thousand and more voices, all cheering his name.

((Ellogean essence, E9. Most pride in Followers N/A (such an insanely vast number it’s made up of different Followers 5 fanclubs.)))

Keris bows. “I am sorry for hurting her at the end there,” she apologises. “She picked the fight, but I shouldn’t have ended it so harshly. If she’s willing to call it square, I have no more quarrel with her.”

She won’t, of course. Keris knows she’s made a bitter and hateful enemy there. But it sounds good; like she’s being the bigger woman.

... figuratively speaking.

He steps closer and has her hand in his before she can react; squeezing it warmly. “Yeah! Trust each other! That’s how we can do it! We just have to work together, to put aside our old grievances and hatreds, and communicate! Communication is the key, Keris! We gotta learn to talk to one another, and when we do that, we can take back the world! I got a vision, and we all got to pull together behind it!” His eyes sparkle with honest glee, his expression gazes through her as if he’s seeing a better world.

((The touch is a sedating venom that’s Poison keyworded and as an Emotion effect makes her willing to agree to everything she says. It costs 2wp to resist its UMI for the scene. His speech is 12 successes to draw her to his cause of TEAMWORK and NAKAMAS and WANTING HIM.))  
((Good goddamn.))

Her head is swimming. Keris can tell that it’s him; that his venom is in her blood and in her mind. But he’s talking about reaching out to people, putting aside hate and strife, working as one. The part of her that’s kind and doesn’t want to harm or hate people, the part of her that’s lonely and just wants to be loved... they flutter under his genuine, open sincerity.

So she lets it be.

“It’s a beautiful vision,” Keris smiles, a dreamy edge to her voice. “A world where people understand each other, and see they don’t have to fight or hate or squabble.”

“You’ve been hurt before, haven’t you?” There’s heartbreak in his voice. “I’ve talked with lots of you. Ligier’s princes and princesses, I mean. A lot of you have been hurt. Who hurt you, Keris? Do you need my help to make it better?”

“It’s okay,” Keris reassures him. “She’s dead now. They all are; Kasseni and everyone else who owned me. I closed that part of my life last year, and I’m better now. And after that...”

Her smile tinges with sadness. “The bad bits that came after I got away from the ones who hurt me, there’s nobody to punish for those. You can’t punch being hungry and cold in the face.”

He wraps his arms over her shoulder, guiding her to a carved stone bench by the side of the road. Lilunu has shaped a stream by it, and planted cherry trees that grow green petals. Many-coloured firelight plays over their faces. Keris looks around in a foggy haze. Everything looks... cleaner. Nicer. And with his arms there, she feels safe. Protected.

Dulmea isn’t saying anything. Probably because this is an Unquestionable who has his arm around her shoulder. But she’d be saying something if something was wrong, so it can’t be wrong.

“You’re Asarin’s friend, aren’t you?” he asks, letting her heavy head loll against his shoulder. “We’ve been friends for a very long time. You mortals wouldn’t really understand the relationship between someone and their souls. But it’s like she’s a little sister for you humans, or maybe a friend from childhood.”

“She really loves you, though,” she mumbles. “Gets all sad’n’upset when you don’t pay ‘ttention to her as much as the others.”

Then she giggles. Hee. He thinks she doesn’t understand about souls. Well, he has half a point, at least. She wouldn’t want to date Haneyl or Sirelmiya. That would be silly. She’s not Sasi, who sleeps with her Seresa.

“It’s really complicated.” He looks pitiful. A wind blows through the trees, bringing with it a scent of something that isn’t quite cherries. “And she shouts at me and yells at me all the time and says really harsh things. I don’t think she likes me.”

“She does!” Keris hastens to assure him. “She’s just bad at sayin’ it. Like me.” She sighs mournfully. “She gets scared of bein’ vulnerable. So she yells and puts up walls and pushes people away, ‘cause...”

She frowns, trying to think properly. “‘Cause...” she slurs, “... she wants someone to... get past her walls. An’ prove they love her ‘nough to put in the effort of... of tryin’ until she lets them in. Otherwise they don’t deserve her. If they can’t handle her at her worst, they haven’t earned her at her best. You know?”

“I don’t think you’re bad at saying it,” the Prince of Leeches says, coaxing her with little nudges to snuggle up closer to him. “I think you and your cute friend are really good pals. I’d like both of you on my team. I’m forming a super elite team of princes and princesses, you see. The best. Only the most beautiful, the best fighters, the ones who understand how to work together and who can form bonds with their special people. And you, Keris, I bet you’d be great at it. You know? The world hurts us. All of us. My first memories were pain, when the bastards of the Sun and the Moon cut up the Sphere of Speech. And you feel that same pain.” He touched over his heart, then over hers. His hand is pleasantly cool, and the skin is soft - like he’s never swung a sword in his life. “That’s why there’s some of us in you.”

Keris grins, thoroughly amused. He’s wrong, and it’s really funny. That’s not why there’s coldblood in her. It’s ‘cause Eko put it in there with her alchemy. She opens her mouth to explain it, but it’s all complicated and the words get tangled and confusing, so she doesn’t bother.

“That sounds nice,” she hums instead, a light blush on her cheeks.

“You were super amazing in the fight with Kassie, and I’d love to see you and her make up,” he says, leaning in. “You can join me. Be with me.” She’s vaguely aware he isn’t letting go of her chest. “How about it, Keris? If you’re one of my closest friends, I can do all sorts of things for you. Things you’d like a lot.”

“Mmm. I’m already taken, though,” she points out, not entirely sure who she’s talking about but pretty certain on that point. The thought just... ripples into her foggy mind like it's been nudged there, tasting like gleeful red whimsy and white light in the warm dark. “She loves me. She would’n like it if I abandoned her for someone else.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I saw the show you put on with her,” the Prince of Leeches murmurs, leaning in for the kiss. His breath is cool against her cheek. “You two are open-minded. She can join in too.”

Keris’s head lolls as his movement shifts her, and his kiss misses her cheek, just a little. It lands on her jawbone instead.

And she remembers what she meant.

The clamour of Hell is ever-present. The music of angyalkae, the clashing of gongs, the rumble of the City and the turbulent weather systems of the demon sky. Tomescu scream at dawn and dusk, blood apes holler their savage cries, the soundscape of the demon realm is an almost physical mass of _noise_ \- beautiful in some parts, harsh and grating in others, but always _present_ in any inhabited area.

The Prince of Leeches pulls the pretty redhead closer, and presses his lips against the white scar running down the sharp, dark curve of her jaw.

All the noise cuts out.

There is nothing. No sound at all. The voice of a demon prince is rendered mute. Their breathing, the babbling of the stream behind them, the gongs and fireworks in the sky... all of it continues as if from behind a glass screen. Hell’s endless cacophony is nowhere to be found, for within a circle ten metres across, the air is still and carries nothing.

It is a place of perfect silence.

Perfect silence, save for a quiet, joyous, terrible little giggle.

Balanodo’s lips touch the mark of the Wind-Kissed, and he senses the blood behind it. Not the blood of a Green Sun Princess, and not the cold and stagnant blood of his progenitor, but blood that is hot and bright and freshly shed; an endless ocean of it without end or bottom. He senses the scything wind that caused it; the infinite cuts and gashes made by a gale that fills no sail and turns no vane but only kills. He feels the inhuman, impossible emotion tied to this thing; this unassuming cicatrix; the streak of white against dusky skin. The mad, obsessive, overwhelming love of a titan to whom reason and moderation are nothing.

The Wind-Kissed raises her head, and issues again that terrible little giggle.

“You want Her to join us?” she asks, and there’s a simple joy there; a happiness and love and gratitude for his offer of inclusion. “She’ll be so happy! I should have known you’d understand. It’s all about communication, right?”

The prince of Hell, the Unquestionable one, falls off his seat in the scramble to get away from the woman. His skin is ghost pale, his eyes wide, his leech-mouth pupils have closed entirely and there’s just irises there. On his hands and legs, he back away, almost crab-walking in his terror. Not of what she says. Of what she doesn’t say. Of what he cannot hear.

His breath comes in rasps. Except he can’t hear it. His heart pounds like it hasn’t before. Except there’s no beating in his ears. He tries to protest, to say he hadn’t meant to, that he had thought he was talking about Peer Sasimana. But his words are cut off, as if his throat had just been cut.

The happy, giggling woman cocks her head at him, and then raises her eyebrows in realisation. Slowly, tentatively, the sounds creep back in - muted at first; terrified by the silence enforced on them, the death they suffered in this terrible aura of an unseen patron.

“Sorry,” Keris says, her cheeks flushed as she laughs at herself for being so silly. Of course he can’t answer when the noise is gone! “I don’t always have control over that, especially when She visits my dreams or listens through my scars.” She runs a finger along the white line, and taps the one on her nose. Then cocks her head, innocent and confused. “Is something wrong?” she asks, with what seems to be complete sincerity.

Balanodo clutches his heart, breaths rasping, something squirming at the back of his throat. “I... I... I need to go,” he says, as he pulls himself upright. Dusts off his black trousers. “You... you...” Rests with his palms on his knees. “You can call her. Draw... her attention, so it falls upon a,” he swallows, “upon someone?”

“Uh huh!” Keris says cheerfully. “She visits me sometimes, and teaches me things. It’s good to have a teacher, don’t you think?” She pouts. “But lord Ligier says I can’t go to his layer in case She shows up there again. Even though he likes me.”

“I’ll...” his voice comes out as a croak, “I’ll be your friend, do things for you, just do not let her attention fall upon me. _Please_ ,” he begs.

“Mmm,” Keris hums, tilting her head and tapping her lip thoughtfully. She has to be very careful not to flex her anima again, because that would be dumb - hee! Dumb, because it would stop her talking! She giggles at herself again, before remembering about being halfway through a conversation.

“Aww. I guess you changed your mind, then?” she asks rhetorically. “Oh well. I guess I can just not mention this to Her if you’re really embarrassed about it, or something. Oh oh oh, but I meant to say! If Kast... Kas... if Kassie doesn’t like my sorry, can you sort of stay on the sidelines and not get involved? I think it’d just make things all worse if she wanted to keep fighting me and asked you to help her with things an’ stuff. We shouldn’t get bogged down with... whatsit... with in-fighting! Right?”

“Of course! Of course!” The Unquestionable bows - to her! - and retreats off backwards. Leaving Keris standing on a street of the Conventicle which has now emptied out entirely. Her head is starting to clear as she thinks about how weird he was acting. Pieces come together.

Oh. _Oh_. He had... and she... and then she’d...

Ohhh.

He’d been making a _move_ on her. Only he’d gotten her too drunk to remember up from down, and she’d forgotten her learned terror and remembered only her first love from Hell. Or... maybe been prompted to it. That nudge of a stray thought into her foggy head... the idea might have been vicious Ekoan whimsy and the way Calesco likes hurting people to teach them; but the way it had been fanned into her drunken mind at just the right time had felt distinctly po-ish, in retrospect. And the result had been that from Balanodo’s perspective, she’d turned out to be... what? What compares to this? The happy, sweet-natured girlfriend of _the most terrifying gang boss in the city_ , maybe. The friendly ditz not quite aware of the terror her protector inspired in others; who'd had a terrified boy on his knees in front of her, begging her not to tell her lover of his flirting lest he be horribly killed. An Unquestionable, begging her for his life.

... thinking back... Keris _likes_ that image. She takes a moment or two longer to bask in the pleasure of having just... yeah, honestly, there’s no other way to put it. She just _terrified and bullied_ an _Unquestionable_.

And it was beautiful. A sweet nectar, after spending so long bowing and scraping at their feet.

Keris basks for a few glorious moments. And then, head still foggy, she sternly reminds herself not to get used to that feeling, because the Silent Wind is not a card she should ever rely on, and even the threat of calling her down deliberately risks drawing more attention than even she can survive. From the Silent Wind herself or the Unquestionable’s reaction; it makes no real difference.

A moment of gloating, a moment of chiding. And then a quiet satisfaction in cutting Kasteen off from her backing. All in all, her takeaway from this encounter is not half bad for a few minutes’ work. Especially given she spent half of it drunk.

Keris nods to herself, and goes home. Where the hangover from the poison hits.

OK, it might also have been the hangover from what Yuula was drinking.

Plus the hangover from days of being shut up in an alchemical workroom, breathing in dangerous amounts of mercury fumes along the way.

Regardless, she’s suffering.

“Well, well,” Dulmea says mercilessly to her when she tries to seek maternal tea and sympathy. “This is entirely your own fault.”

“Ngghhh,” complains Keris weakly. She considers trying to push her regeneration into overdrive to fix this, but then remembers that doing so would make it hurt _even worse_.

She’s not sure what ‘even worse’ than this head-pounding agony would look like, but she has no intention of finding out. Whimpering, Keris stumbles in the rough direction of the baths, picks a room at random, engages in some rapid grabbing, dunking and throwing, and then crawls into a small dark soft nest of cold, damp towels.

Ahhhh.

Bliss.

* * *

Fortunately, by the time she goes to seek out Sasi - who, in fairness, is much more used to hangovers than Dulmea is - it’s mostly faded. And Sasi, sprawled out on a divan in her lingerie and having clearly put effort into waiting for her girlfriend’s arrival, lets a frown crease her pale brow as Keris explains things. With perhaps a few bits left out concerning how much she’d enjoyed it.

“That nearly went very wrong,” she says to Keris. “Why did you let him get so close?”

“He came out of nowhere!” Keris protests. “I ran into him! I mean, I _literally_ ran into him; I bounced off him hard enough that I wound up on the ground!” She frowns. “And I could have sworn he wasn’t there the second before, too,” she adds, puzzled. “I’m normally really good about hearing stuff in my way. I have to be, with the speed I move at.”

“This is a problem,” Sasi says seriously, sitting up. She steeples her fingers in front of her nose, fingers twitching as she reviews unseen records in her mind’s eye. “He works like... well.” She glances directly at Keris. “Like you. I can deal with the Shashalme or Ligier, because they have urges and drives that you can satisfy. But the Prince of Leeches wants you to love him. And he’s as lazy as anything. So how things work is that he does nothing while his devotees handle satisfying his whims. Or what they think his whims could be.” She shakes her head. “Keep away from him. I... considered him as a patron before I realised the cost. I can’t lose you to him.”

Keris purses her lips thoughtfully.

“You won’t,” she says at length. “Can I show you something? Something private, I mean. Something secret.”

Sasi’s eyebrows flute up and she smiles wickedly, shedding her concern like water off a duck’s back. “You’re going to ruin my fun by not immediately taking off all your clothes, aren’t you?” she accuses.

“It does actually involve taking my clothes off,” Keris says archly. “I don’t want to ruin them. But not here. Hmm... the baths, I think. I can do it in there without breaking anything. And I haven’t had a chance to really enjoy myself in water while using it before.”

They decamp to the bathroom - one of the larger ones - and Keris strips, talking as she disrobes.

“I sent you a dream while I was in Taira,” she says. “About how I’d learned to become the wind. How I understood why you found it beautiful to be the shadow. Why you could feel so natural in another form, because you were as much that as you are flesh and blood. Yeah? And you can just... do it whenever you feel like it?”

“Why, yes,” Sasi says, wriggling out of her undergarments and lowering herself into the water. She melts away herself, into a tarry vaguely feminine shape that oozes up the side of the pool. “Like this. It’s a little tiring, but it has its uses.”

Keris smiles, shucks her last garment, and strokes out her hair. The silver feathers shine in the low light. “And you know,” she continues, “that I got in touch with my po. That I took part of her nature into myself more fully. Learned to be comfortable in her territory, to use her senses.”

“You said, yes,” the tarry shadow says.

Keris nods, and brushes a kiss to her fingers that she presses to the shadow. “Don’t be scared,” she says, and slips into the water, propelling herself out in the pool-sized bath. This, here - this wide expanse of water - this is large enough for her to take her other form without scraping gouges into the floor or carving gashes into the walls.

Keris reaches into herself and finds the hissing, coiling part of her soul that’s utterly and essentially human. She bleeds into it, and it bleeds into her, and she feels herself expand and grow and _lengthen_ in the still waters of the bath; feels her armour cover her in silver feathers and her hair turn white and her teeth turn sharp.

She opens her eyes, her serpentine body moving with easy, natural grace to support her in the water, and purrs.

The tarry mass is behind her shoulder, not-quite-solid arms feeling them. “This isn’t the Devil Tyrant,” Sasi whispers into her ear. Now she’s in front of her, flowing over Keris’s shoulder like ink in water. “Nor is it the Demon Emperor. In fact, it doesn’t feel like any of the All-Makers alone.” A pillar of shadow with no real legs puts her hands on her waist, squeezing it in impossibly thin. “Keris, have you gone and done something impossible and illogical and nonsensical again?”

“A Ssshintai is jussst joining to sssomething with power to take on a new form,” Keris explains happily. “My po is powerful. Ssso I joined with her.” She flexes, powerful coils skimming them across the pool with a single flick of her beautiful tail, and pulls a graceful turn just before colliding with the side. A wave of displaced water is sent out to drench the wall by the sheer size and speed of her body, and she laughs happily with a hissing undertone.

“Thisss is me, Ssassi,” she explains. “My human sssoul. My rootsss. I worked really hard to underssstand it. It isn’t a form for fighting. It helpsss me recover. Any magic or mutations or mind-warping on me get ssstripped away. Thisss form cutsss away everything but _me_.” Even as she explains it, she can feel the pain as her unnatural body reacts to the presence of the thoughts and desires that the Prince left in her. There’s a creeping pain under her skin from how he played with her heart, and peeling burns where he touched her.

((1A from this.))

“To be so in touch with your lower, most base self,” Sasi breaths. The tar peels away from her, slinking back down into her shadow and leaving her pale and exposed. “Such a thing to do. How can you bear it?”

“My lower ssself is beautiful,” Keris says sympathetically. “You sssaid ssso yourssself.”

She curls around Sasi, carefully carefully carefully, keeping her feathers flat against her flanks and their edges curled inwards so as not to cut her love. Winding around her turn by turn, Keris wraps Sasi up and surrounds her with great coils of feather-clad muscle, and when she’s all snug and safe in the centre of Keris’s self, her human bits have just enough slack to nuzzle up to her, enjoying this moment of them being the same size.

“You sssee?” Keris whispers. “You’ll never lose me to powers like his. I’ll always throw them off and come back to you.”

Sasi reaches up with a soft hand and brushes Keris’s jaw. “You’re so beautiful like this,” she whispers. She pulls a face. “And I was going to be good today,” she mutters. “I was going to have us work on the play. On setting up the music and running the script past you. But then you put me in an impossible situation like this. How am I meant to focus on dramatics when my girlfriend is a giant impossibly beautiful snake woman who wants to wrap me up in her coils and put that long, forked tongue to use?”

She sounds perfectly honest. She sounds as if she was actually meaning to get work done today. But somehow Keris is certain she’s lying. 

The fact she was waiting for Keris in her lingerie is probably a major contributing factor to her doubt as to Sasi’s honesty.

“It’sss true,” Keris grins, her tongue flickering out to taste Sasi’s lips, pleased that her love isn’t scared of her gorgeous lamia-form. “I’m terrible for tempting you like thisss~”

Sasi grins impishly. “Probably just stay human for my going away party, though,” she says. “I want my wicked snake-queen captor all for myself.”

“Wrong way round,” Keris hisses. “You’re the one who’s all _mine~”_

And she proceeds to demonstrate it, too.


	4. Chapter 4

The threat of another displeased Unquestionable does wonders to focus the mind, and over the course of the next few days Keris and Sasi get down to work. Keris gets started on reviewing the music Sasi has sketched up, adding some of her own fair to the borrowed Realm music and lyrics, while Sasi returns to actually writing the script. It’s hard work, even as the Conventicle empties again with the end of Calibration. Pages and pages of altered and discarded scripts start to accumulate around any place Sasi sits for an extended period, while Keris starts to get sulky and bad-tempered as she struggles with unfamiliar Realm styles of music and the constraints of their operettas. Sasi gets several vile-tongued rants at the limits of the form directed at her. If only Zanara was here, Keris could just hand all the work off to them!

Gods, to think a couple of years ago she didn’t understand how useful it was to have souls to delegate to. Now she feels crippled because they’re not here to help.

Lilunu, interestingly, is willing to put off spending some time with Keris when she finds about their project. “I want to see it unspoiled, without knowing about the previous versions of the scripts and the songs you scrapped for not making sense,” she says, smiling, as she and Eko play Gateway against each other. Haneyl is sulking because Lilunu thrashed her. “I actually like this time of year. There’s enough of my princes and princesses around that I’m not bored, but Calibration is just so hectic. I wish I could share some of the work.”

Sasi and Keris are busy workers, and between the two of them, over the course of a week they manage to throw together an okay script and some catchy tunes.

Well, objectively it’s actually the kind of masterpiece that the great mortal playwrights of Creation might manage once or twice in a lifetime, but neither Sasi nor Keris is quite pleased with it. It tells the story of a Realm legionary, Elanora, far from her husband on a long term posting. She sings of her loneliness, of how she misses him, of her faith. Sasi has tweaked this from the original to make her far more pompous and hypocritical. Then she starts attending a dance-bar with friends, when she sees an unnamed dancer covered in arcane tattoos who does a dance that captivates her. She tries to keep on with her life, but she grows obsessed with the dancer and attends again and again, trying to catch another sight of her. She begins to see her everywhere.

Then comes an intermission.

The second half of the play covers Elanora’s descent into madness, as she sees the dancer on the street and finds the same Yozi-blessing tattoos on the other woman’s body appearing on her own. The dancer is no longer in the club, and Elanora wanders the streets looking for her. A monk tries to save her, but he turns out to be a hypocrite who only has interest in her body - she kills him, but he is gone when she looks back. As she loses her mind she starts to emulate other things of the dancer; degrading herself by dancing for strangers and the like, and in the end she pledges her souls to the Yozis in a dramatic and lyrically inclined cult ritual.

It’s now the date of the play on the Street of Golden Lanterns, and the first act is just over. Keris bounces up and down on her toes behind the curtain, pulling off her costume for another one. Sasi is sagging, looking tired. She’s been having to keep her soul ignited to provide the grand orchestration; the scenery all images and shadows in the light of her soul.

“I think that went well,” Keris reassures her. Keris herself had _great_ fun towards the end of the act and is looking forward to more of it during the start of the second; using Gales to be wherever Elanora looks and stepping backstage every time she grasps for one - for while most the onlookers can’t tell the real Keris apart from the Gales at a glance, Sasi only has to be sure to always reach out for the beautiful one.

Wilting, Sasi sprawls out on cushions, breathing deeply. Only her brow is burning now, but the effort of the first act has clearly cost her. “We can do this,” she says, more to herself than anyone else. She grabs a handful of candied lemons, and starts munching on them even as one of her idiotic extras born from coldblood magic brings over her next costume change, for when Elanora is wandering the street in rags. 

“Keris, can you see how the crowd is reacting? Once you do that, I need the tattoos for the next act then I can get dressed.” There’s a planned moment coming up where her rags are torn off her, revealing how far the Yozi praise now covers her body.

Keris edges up to the edge of the curtain, and steps backstage. Safely there, she can look at this vast audience - perhaps half the size of the ones who had seen her fight against Kasteen, but that’s enough that this grand theatre lit by dim golden lanterns is overflowing. Demons are packed into the aisles and they’re crowding at the entrances.

She and Sasi are famous. People have come just to see them.

Meanwhile, of course, the ones who matter are in the boxes. And there are many demon lords and princes there. Keris smiles as she sees that Lilunu has made a rare trip away from the Althing to see the play, leaning against Ligier, while in grand centre place is the golden form of Ipithymia herself. The patron seems enthralled, and Keris heard her laughing raucously during the first song of comic hypocrisy, where Elanora sang about her virtue while being an awful Immaculate.

Keris scans the crowd, looking for anyone else she knows. Yuula is there, as are a few other demon lords and princes of her acquaintance - including Lelabet. And ah, there, wearing a suspicious hooded cloak and clearly trying not to be noticed, is Asarin, sitting with a servant of hers. Keris can’t help but smile. She knows how hard it must have been for her friend to even step foot onto the Street of Golden Lanterns.

“We’re doing great,” she reports to Sasi. “The aisles are packed, the entrances are clogged with more demons wanting to get in. We’ve got half a dozen Unquestionable watching at least, a bunch of peers, more citizens than I can count... wait, fuck, I think that’s a Priest. What in the Makers’ names is a Priest doing here?” She boggles for a moment, then shakes it off with a shrug. “Anyway, yeah, they’re loving it. Ipithymia is certainly having a good time.”

Asarin is probably not going to enjoy the second act as much, Keris suspects. It is, to use a phrase from Eko, entirely too l-lewd. But Keris’s parts are mostly just more cabaret stuff; it’s Sasi who’s a little more risqué. But not too much. Keris has her limits - and she’s not going to let Sasi go too far just to please the demon princes. That might help a little, or at least make the False Sun less embarrassed when she and Keris next get to chat.

“C’mere, let me help you with those tattoos,” Keris says, and gets to work.

* * *

The second act is even more popular with the crowd than the first, and the Street of Golden Lanterns leads the applause at the end. Then come the offers of more ways to entertain them and an extended run, demands for encores, and the generosity of pleased Unquestionable.

Keris can’t even process it, and she’s more worried about Sasi who’s basically asleep on her feet. Fortunately, Lilunu comes to their aid and politely requests the aid of her princesses in getting her back to the All-Thing as her chakras are feeling a little bit unstable and there are just _so many_ breakable things in the area and...

Ligier quickly agrees, and tasks Keris in making sure she gets back safely.

They settle down in Lilunu’s great ornamental palanquin, and she opens a bottle of wine for the three of them. Sasi is curled into a ball, napping.

“Well, that was very wonderfully done, Keris,” Lilunu says, beaming. “In fact, that was delightful! So funny in parts! And the music was yours - no, don’t deny it, I recognised it!” She coughs. “I did notice the two of you slightly wilting under the attention of all the others, so I might have... exaggerated slightly how ill I’m feeling.”

“Thank you,” Keris says gratefully. “Sasi was having to keep her soul flared the whole time, and...” She casts a rueful, half-sympathetic, half-teasing look down at her lover. “Well, she’s not built to exert herself for that long. Even I would’ve been tired after a whole play spent with my soul bared. And she was tiring herself out physically too, with all that dancing.”

“It did amuse me greatly how you did so much with so few actors who weren’t one of you,” Lilunu agrees, sipping her wine. “How did you even stage her scenes? And who was that handsome young man with the golden horns who served as the Yozi priest for the final scene?”

That had been some work to arrange. Keris didn’t really want to play that role - and needed to be herself for her final dance anyway - and Sasi’s blood-figments couldn’t take such a major role. They’d nearly cut the cult-leader entirely, Keris recounts, until she’d remembered about Nyquan, the grown-up one of Vali’s keruby who’d been serving in a bar. They’d paid him to take that role - quite handsomely - and he’d really perked up after eating those coins.

“My goodness,” Lilunu says. “I had thought it was maybe one of your own wind-copies, Keris, just modified... uh, very extensively.”

“Honestly, we really would’ve had to cut it otherwise,” she admits. “A Gale wouldn’t have been good enough, and I needed to be in the last dance. Still, Nyquan did well. I think the skill of his kind is related to how...” she winces slightly even as she says it, “... how well they’re paid.”

Lilunu leans back in her seat, shucking her outer layer of robes for the softer, pale turquoise one underneath. “You know, Keris,” she observes, “if you don’t mind me saying so, you’ve really grown up over the past year or so. Ever since you had your adorable little twins.” She sighs, and there’s a hint of melancholy in the noise. “Motherhood suits you.”

Keris glows happily. Talking about her children is always a reliable way to bring her mood up. “Not just motherhood,” she corrects. “Kinship. Being part of a clan again. And you’re part of that; you know you are. You’re family to me.”

The other woman - demon princess - smiles. “You know, you’ve actually done a _wonderful_ job with the entertainment, too, this year. Your grand fight, and your two entertaining spectacles with Sasimana. Did I hear right that Ipithymia is granting you a manse as payment for your services she’s so pleased with the performance?” 

Keris’s eyes open wide. “She did?” She vaguely recalls something about that, but she had been distracted by Sasi and there had been so many people talking on and on and...

“Oh yes! I might have suggested that you would really appreciate a place with good connections, and she wants you to like her. You have a real talent for making - and hosting - grand spectacles.”

“Well...” blushes Keris, flattered. “You know. You taught me well, and all. I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

“Well, darling, I do have an offer for you. The Calibration parties and the Althing have grown to a level that I sort of can’t handle it all,” Lilunu admits ruefully. “If my souls were healthy... well, I could delegate work to them like you do to yours, but... that’s not on the table. No, I do actually have a limited budget for calling on the help of my princes for arranging such things, but I don’t know why I’ve never really used it.” She leans in. “Keris, how would you like to be my Mistress of Revelry? You’d be in charge of the grand entertainment for two of the five days, give or take, and you’d have the resources of my lands at your disposal. My servants would answer to you. All you’d need to do is give the people grand spectacles, sweeping dramas, and sport.”

Keris’s eyes widen as she takes the offer in. It’s...

... it’s a pretty big offer.

“Um,” she says. “I... uh... give me a moment.”

Mistress of Revelry. It’s a pretty-sounding title. And a powerful one. Oh, it might seem like just an meaningless bauble to some, devoid of any armies or manses or potent weapons. And it’s true, there’s not much there she could apply directly to most problems. But... full control over the grand entertainment for almost half of Calibration? It would be a level of soft power that would rival a major division head in some ways - on _top_ of what Keris already has. She could use it as an excuse to do missions explicitly for Lilunu, claiming them as ‘entertainment tasks’. She’d have more resources and backing, the ability to sway more of the Unquestionable to her side; _far_ more latitude in hiding her... less legal activities. She could take some of the strain off Lilunu, make waves among the other Infernals - even start normalising the attitude that serfs and souls made by Infernals are perfectly natural, nothing to get censured over or opposed or chained up.

And then, of course, there are the downsides. It would be work - a lot _more_ work on top of her division head role, even if she could delegate some of it to her souls. It would put her in regular contact with dangerous, unpredictable Unquestionable like Balanodo or Ululaya whose very presence would try to sway her. She’d be under massive pressure to perform well every year. And... well, Lilunu isn’t saying it. But Keris knows that this little play she’s just performed would not be enough in the long run. If she took this role, she’d have to include - and probably participate in - performances more along the lines of the _other_ show she and Sasi gave.

“Can I... can I think about it?” she asks. “It’s not that I’m not... deeply, _deeply_ flattered. It’s just, on top of my role as head of the lower south-west, I’m not sure how much time I’d have, and it would be a lot of pressure...”

She bites her lip. “I’ll answer as soon as I can? But I don’t think I can give one now. Not without thinking it over a lot.”

Lilunu sighs. “I understand, Keris. It is a lot to ask of you - and you’re already always so busy. “ She glances over at Sasi. “Where should I drop you and her off? Her place is nearer. I think she needs a bath and bed.”

“Yes please,” Keris says. “I’ll visit you soon. I, uh. Should probably talk to you and lord Ligier about that deathlord problem in the southwest and how I found out about it. But that can wait; it’s not urgent.”

“I suspect it’s somewhere in the pile of reports I haven’t had time to look through because of all of the demands of Calibration,” Lilunu says mournfully. “But Keris, this time of year, I can always find time for you.” She leans over and strokes Sasi’s hair. “And Sasimana, too. Take care of her. She’s one of my eldest.” She looks Keris in the eye. “There aren’t many left of you who... who were from the first wave.”

Leaning over, Keris gives her mentor a hug. She’s never asked if someone held her Exaltation between Yamal and herself. She suspects so - it seems unlikely that Lilunu held onto it for the four years between Sasi and Testolagh Exalting and Keris taking the Second Breath.

She doesn’t know the name of whoever fell before her, and she doesn’t want to, either. The idea is unsettling, and she tries not to think about it whenever it comes up.

Lilunu sees them to the door, then heads off alone. Keris carries Sasi in the door, and-

“What’s the matter with her? What happened?” Testolagh, wild-eyed, stares at Keris carrying the cradled Sasi. His one human eye’s pupil is very small; his hair is flattened on one side like he’s been sleeping on it. He’s dressed only in shorts; his torso shows off the scars. “Is that blood on her? And where did all the new tattoos and piercings come from?”

“Calm down, calm down,” Keris tells him. “She’s fine, just tired. We were putting on a play for the Unquestionable; she had to keep her soul flared for the whole thing to give us an orchestra. That’s why she’s out like a felled tree. The tattoos were part of her costume; I’ll take them off once I’ve got her into a bed. I’m… not sure about the blood. Hmm. But she doesn’t look cut, and there were a bunch of demons crowding around to congratulate us. Might’ve come from one of them.”

He bunches up his shoulders, and breathes through his nose, but doesn’t act immediately. He hovers over her shoulder as she takes Sasi to her dark, deep baths - and ignores her suggestion that this is a woman’s place and he should give them some privacy.

She’s lying, because Sasi doesn’t split the baths by sex in her place, but he should at least listen when she says that.

It doesn’t take long for his looming to get annoying, and she snaps at him to at least sit down while she gently bathes Sasi - though honestly she could have tipped buckets over her while marching a full brass band past and she doubts Sasi would have woken up - and removes the tattoos and piercings one by one with root-like fingers.

Then, lifting her up again without a hint of effort, the two of them with their trailing third retire to a bedroom where Keris tucks Sasi in and drops a fond kiss on her forehead.

They sit there in the dark room for a while; the man of brass and fire and the woman of wind and water; their sand and shadow lover nestled in deep, soft sheets between them.

“So, she tells me she convinced you,” says Keris after a while. “I bet that took her a while. What did she have to say to talk you into it?”

He has the decency, at least, to look away for a moment. “It’s not just one thing. Some of it is that... yes. Over the past year, I’ve seen you be a mother to my daughter. And to your own children. Aiko loves you, and she talks about you a lot. She talks about your children like they’re her siblings, or at least cousins. You’re part of my family’s life. I can’t pretend you don’t exist. And she does want us to get along. She... she said she wants me to be happy when we can’t see each other, so if we give it a try, it might work out better than the...” he sighs, “the stress on our relationship when we see each other a few times a year and she’s sleeping with other men and women.”

Keris holds the look for a moment longer before taking pity on him. “I can agree with making her happy,” she agrees. “And Aiko is a sweetheart. You’re a good father to her; she adores you.” She rolls her eyes. “Even if she obviously gets her stubbornness from you in spades.”

She sighs. “We’ll try it. But I have a condition, okay? Aiko doesn’t find out. I’m ‘Aunty Keris’ right now, and she’s happy with that. We don’t know if... anything _more_ will work out long-term, and she’s as manipulative as Sasi in her own way. A lot more transparent and adorable about it, but if she finds out we’re... ‘in love’, she’ll jump straight to ‘you’re marrying daddy so you’re my mama too’, and then if things fall apart it’ll break her heart.”

“No kisses, only sex?” he asks, raising his left eyebrow - the one with the scar running through it that crosses his brass eye.

Keris grins viciously. “The last man who kissed me fell off the bench and crawled away screaming in terror,” she says. “If you really want to, you can try.”

“... I’ll take that as a no to kisses, then.” He crosses his hands in front of him, back hunched. “What did Sasimana do, though?” he asks, a catch in his voice. “I haven’t seen her in this state since... well. Years. When I had to track down where she’d fallen unconscious after drinking and smoking too much. Before we got involved.”

A helpless shrug is his only answer. “It was only a play, Testolagh. There was some sex in it - just her dumb coldblood figments in the background to make it seem more explicit than it really was, not us; I asked not to perform like that in front of everyone.” Her face shades red. “There wasn’t anything special in the story, I think. Realm legionary falls in lust with an exotic dancer - that was me - starts seeing her everywhere, goes mad, winds up abandoning her faith and pledging herself to the Yozis... you know the kind of thing. I think this is just because she kept her anima going through the whole play. She’s not like you and me. We’re strong, we’re tough. We can keep going longer before exhaustion bites. Sasi...”

She strokes her lover’s beautiful grey hair again, and sighs sadly. “She’s not really built to endure.”

His knuckles whiten. “She always puts too much of herself into anything she does,” he says, so softly that Keris can barely hear him over the music and noise of Hell. “She doesn’t leave anything in reserve. Especially if she thinks she’s going to be impressing those damn demon princes. I used to think it was her honour, that she’d sworn to serve them and so she would do that. Something understandable like that. But no. She gives too much away. She probably acted her heart out trying to make the lords of Hell approve of her.”

“If it’s any consolation, they did,” Keris says. “And yeah. She wants... she wants everyone to be happy. To enjoy themselves. So she tries to help them do it.” She motions between them with a hair tendril. “S’why she wants us together.”

He doesn’t have any answers or retorts for that. “In a state like that,” he says instead, “she’ll probably sleep for a day at least. Maybe I should see if Aiko’s asleep, and if she is, move her into her bed. It’ll give her more time with her mother, even if she’s out cold.”

Keris nods, then hesitates and shakes her head. “You stay here with Sasi,” she says. “I’ll go find Aiko. It’s been a while since she’s seen me, so she’ll be happy if she’s awake. And I want to see my twins.”

* * *

On silent feet, Keris creeps into Aiko’s bedroom. The lights are off in here, and only the soft green glow of Aiko’s nightlife casts shadowless illumination. Aiko is asleep, cuddled up with Kali who has quite notable stains on her face which suggests Sasi has been indulging her demands for treats. But where is...

Silver eyes gleam, and Keris sees Ogin up on top of one of the cupboards, peeking out from his little cushion nest.

“Hello, mama,” Ogin says softly. “Where have you been?”

“Hi, sweetie,” Keris murmurs, lifting her hair up to form a slide for him. “Mama was learning medicine to make people better. I’m sorry I wasn’t around for a while. Did you have a nice time with Aiko?”

Ogin crawls forwards, to grip onto her hair. He’s growing so fast. She hasn’t seen much of him in only a few days - a week, tops - and she’s sure he’s bigger than the last time she did this. Scooting down, he flops on top of her head, snuffling as he does it.

“Mama,” he says thoughtfully. “You smell like sweat and blood and ink.”

“Well, after I learned my medicine I had to put on a play for the big people,” she explains. “And Sasi helped, and she uses...”

She pauses.

“... blood and ink magic,” she finishes slowly. “Fu- uh, funny you should mention that, moonbeam. You just made a very clever point, and I think I know why Sasi was so tired she fell asleep right away after we finished. Shall we go see her?”

Slipping down the back of her head, Ogin wraps his little arms around her neck, and hangs from her back. His tails wrap around as far as they reach. “Yeah,” he says into his mother’s ear in a tiny whisper, a voice that no one other than her could hear.

Shifting her hair to support him and smiling goofily, Keris gently rolls Aiko and Kali up in their blankets and picks them up. She’s careful not to jolt or jar them as she paces back to Sasi’s room, Ogin’s weight hanging behind her and his little arms wrapping around her temples.

“You worked out how good mama’s hearing is, didn’t you?” she murmurs, low enough not to wake the girls. Ogin’s own hearing is sharp; he can easily parse her words. “My clever little moonbeam. Well done.”

“You hear us doing things when Rathan or Haneyl don’t,” he explains in the same hushed whisper. “So I tried making noise until you didn’t hear me”

She chuckles, low and soft. “Eko can, though. Her ears are as good as mine.”

Ogin nods, clearly storing the information for later. And maybe that’s a mistake. Other people think he’s the well-behaved one of the twins. Keris, as their mother, knows better. In some ways he’s worse because unlike his sister, he can delay gratification.

As she sneaks into Sasi’s room, Testolagh is leaning over her, adjusting the sit of her wet hair with a single finger. She pauses there, watching - just as her little moonbeam does. She’s never really seen him unguarded around... well, around Keris at all.

Eventually, though, Kali snuffles and shifts form in her sleep, stretching out as a tiger cub and lashing her tails contentedly. Neither she nor Aiko wake up, but it catches Testolagh’s attention and gets Keris moving again. She slides the girls in beside her and waits to see if Ogin wants to climb down after them.

... no, as it turns out. He’s apparently quite happy to continue being mama’s little head-monkey.

“I think it might not just be exhaustion,” Keris murmurs in the quiet of the bedroom. “She might have overused her gifts from Elloge. Coldblood powers make you bleed for them sometimes.” The sheets are organic, so her root-tendrils can slip through to see if she’s right without needing to pull them back and expose Sasi to the cooler air outside her nest of blankets. Her questing fingers dig in, and below the flawless skin, that’s where she finds the micro-scars. On the hands, the lips, the interior of the nose, the eyes, down below - everywhere where the skin is thin. Oh, Sasi’s treated them, covered them up, hidden them where you’d need to be able to dig in and check like Keris can - but they’re there. Marks of where her cold blood has escaped her, laden with meaning.

And right now, she’s notably anaemic. Of course it doesn’t show; she’s always very pale, but she’s lacking iron in her blood.

“Yeah, thought so,” she murmurs. “Alright, I’m going to make her something for when she wakes up - she’s anaemic, but I can brew something that’ll put iron back in her blood and boost her bone marrow for a few hours. I assume you’ll stay with her and the girls?”

He rubs the back of his neck. “My sleep cycle is not in synch with this,” he admits. “I might have to go next door so I can read, because Aiko tends to wake whenever there’s light and she needs her rest.”

She nods. “I’ll leave Iris to keep an eye on them, then, and I’ll be down in the kitchens if you need me. Ogin? Do you want to come with mama or stay with the girls?”

Her son turns his head away from Testolagh. “With you,” he whispers.

She nuzzles her head back against him and lets Iris launch off her arm, circle twice and then paint herself across the ceiling, blowing out happy little puffs of flame. A mental nudge is all it takes for Keris to get a second sense of vision, looking down from above on the three sleeping bodies.

She smiles, nods to Testolagh, and makes her way downstairs. Sasi’s estate doesn’t have a proper alchemist’s lab, but she has tools in her soul and it won’t be much trouble to whip up a few simple blood-boosting pills before Sasi wakes up. And rich soup is simple, given the very-well-stocked pantries here.

* * *

Sasi’s servants have most of the things she’d need, but not everything. Keris decides it’d be faster to go and get the missing ingredients herself, rather than rely on them - especially since her servants want to go through her butler and argh, it’ll just take too long.

So she dashes off, heading home to grab her things. She vaults the fence and crosses the dome, dodging the crowds of adoring - lustful - demons waiting outside both of their townhouses.

In the gardens of her own place, she finds that Eko and Asarin are sitting there under oversized frilly parasols, drinking... well, Asarin has tea. Eko doesn’t. But both of them have whole platefuls of very tiny and sugary cakes. Asarin is wearing a soft yellow morningrobe with her hair done up elaborately in (probably Ekoan) ribbons, while Eko herself is in an abomination of frills and is drinking her blood with a straw though the mouth of her mask. Asarin must have headed here from the Street of Golden Lanterns.

“Oh!” Keris blinks, landing just short of them from a jump and pacing off the momentum. “Hi Asarin. Sorry to, uh, drop in on your tea party.” A few quick orders to a nearby servant send them running to get the ingredients she needs, and she checks on Sasi and the girls through Iris’s eyes. Still deeply asleep. Content that she has time to spare; Keris seats herself to spend a few minutes catching up with her friend and daughter. “How’ve you been?”

Asarin turns bright red at the sight of Keris. It’s really an impressive display. It starts at the cheeks, but swiftly spreads across her whole face until it’s at her browline. And it doesn’t stop there. There’s red tinges in the burning brown fire of her hair. “H-hello, Keris,” Asarin stammers. “Uh. Lovely... lovely... lovely... sun we’re having.”

Eko vanishes silently. Keris can’t hear her, but she’s probably directly behind her so she can avoid looking her in the eye.

Keris winces.

“Can we, ah...” She clears her throat, aware that she’s also going red. “Fight! Uh, I mean, not that _we_ should fight. But you heard about the fight I had with Kasteen? The new peer on her second Calibration who,” she rolls her eyes, “is infatuated with your Greater Self, the hussy.”

“H-have a seat,” Asarin says quickly. “Um. Yes. Yes.” She takes a breath, and her hair flares up as her expression shifts - covering embarrassment with anger. “And yes! She’s just another one of his flunkies! They always show up! I’ve seen so many over the years! Dragonblooded and moon chosen and nonsense like that! Idiots! All idiots! And...” she trails away.

“He came to me,” she says, more softly, hair dying down. “H-he... he said you were dangerous to be around, Keris? That... um. That you are involved with the Silent Wind.” She peers over Keris’s shoulder. “No, Eko. I’m going to say it! Eko says that... that she’s the daughter of the Silent Wind. That you and her are... um. ‘Good friends’. And that’s where Eko and Calesco come from.

“That’s... that’s just Eko being... imaginative again?”

Keris bites her lip. She’s quiet for a moment.

“He showed... interest in me,” she says slowly, and quickly holds up a hand. “Not that kind, I don’t think. But I wanted to head it off just in case and make it very clear to him that he shouldn’t be chasing after other girls; that he should be paying attention to _you_. And I did tell him so,” she adds, smirking. “So I scared him a little. But, well. I might have played it up a bit, but he wasn’t wrong, no. I’m a Scourge, after all. She’s my patron.”

She forces a tentative smile. “Don’t be scared,” she... it’s meant as a reassurance, and comes out more like a plea. “She rarely comes to me, and so far the only person She’s ever hurt during her visits is me. I don’t call on Her. You won’t be in any danger.” She shrugs. “He won’t be chasing my skirts ever again, either. And I think I convinced him to drop Kasteen and treat you better in future. Can you... be okay with that?” She meets Asarin’s eyes nervously. “I’m still the same person you’ve been friends with. Eko’s been Her daughter all along. Nothing’s changed.”

They talk further. And maybe if Keris’s words taste of the deep sea and there’s a light in her eyes like that of the blood red moon, that’s why Asarin can be talked down. But maybe it’s just because Keris is making senses. And because, of course, she’s making it quite clear she’s not interested in the Prince of Leeches.

“I don’t like it,” Asarin admits, looking between Keris and the Eko who’s presumably just over her shoulder. “But... I’ve known Eko for a while. She’s a strange girl, but she doesn’t kill everything she comes across. I...” she swallowed. “I think... I mean, I believe I can take this on trust. Though it makes me nervous.”

“I know,” Keris says. “But hey! Look on the bright side! He’s going to drop Kasteen now, or at least not back her anymore. You have the Lionesses, and access to Shuu Mua’s ruins - as well as any others I go exploring in the Southwest. And-”

A torrent of giggles comes from behind her, and she turns, frowning. Nothing she’d been saying was particularly funny...

... wait. She’d been focusing too much on her conversation with Asarin to really notice it, but the lump on the back of her head _had_ been shifting a bit. And the sound of her own voice could easily have masked a quiet enough whisper, where someone staying silent might have heard it...

“Ogin?” Keris says delicately. “What exactly did you just tell Big Sister Eko to make her laugh so hard?”

Ogin pokes his head around, smiling like a smugly self-satisfied baby who’s got one up over his mother. “Nothing,” he sing-songs.

She pinches the bridge of her nose. “Eko...” she warns. “‘fess up. What’s so funny?”

Eko skips around. She’s not talking to her disgraceful mother, she informs Keris with a snippy fingerwag. Firstly she gets in a really cool big fight without even calling on Eko once, then she disgraces herself, then she vanishes for all of Calibration because she l-lo-loves Oula more than her own children. Eko starts ticking offences off her fingers. Then she has a giant play in front of lots of people, then she doesn’t tell Eko or Asarin about it or get them invitations, then they have to sneak in to watch it in disguise, and then - Eko shakes her head gravely - it was all lewds! She jabs her finger at Keris. Lewds!

“That was _why_ I didn’t send invites and oh godsdammit of course you were the servant she had with her,” Keris groans. “I _assumed_ the both of you wouldn’t want to see it. Though I’m flattered you came anyway, despite the, uh, venue.”

She turns wounded eyes on Asarin. “Both my children are bullying me, and I’ve hurt your feelings by accident,” she mourns. “Can you possibly ever forgive me?”

Asarin holds her hands over her flaming cheeks. “I shouldn’t have gone,” she mutters. “People pr-propositioned me on the way there! And back!”

Eko stabbed the ones Asarin didn’t hit with her disguised hammer, Eko contributes helpfully.

“And I saw much more of you than I wanted to - and I’ll never be able to look Peer Sasimana in the face again! Or any other part! Because... ah!” She bats at her own cheeks. “Eko is right to be mortified!”

“I am sorry,” Keris says, bowing her head. “But Ipithymia demanded a play, and... well, when the Unquestionable ask, you don’t say no. That was about as... un-lewd as I could make it - and believe me, I had to spend a whole morning shooting down ideas that were _worse_.” She cringes lightly. “You know how the Street of Golden Lanterns is. Have sympathy for me, and be glad I got to keep at least some of my clothes on.”

The demon lord shakes her head. “Anyway, yes. I did want to say I’d be interested in keeping up our arrangement and heading out with you again on your very comfortable boat.” She sips her tea. “In all honesty, I was a little worried coming back for Calibration. There was a risk some sorcerer might summon me, but perhaps the fact that they haven’t been able to find me while I was with you means they’re assuming someone else has me bound. I’d really rather leave for Creation at least five days before the next new moon, though.”

Keris nods. “I can arrange that. Most of my work here is done already, I just have a few things left to tie up.” Ogin pokes his head over her shoulder again, and issues a shy wave to the demon lord, which earns him a fond kiss on the cheek and a wave back from Asarin.

“Ah,” Keris adds, hearing demonic footsteps approach. “And here’re my ingredients. I’ll let you get back to your tea party.” She rises, stretches, and accepts the box, rising to her tiptoes as she prepares for the sprint back to Sasi’s estate. Back in the bedroom, Kali is nuzzling Sasi’s ear in her sleep and jerking her leg in a way that probably means she’s disembowelling something in her dreams, likely in one of her other shapes.

Only one thing gives her pause before she sets off.

“... wait. How in the hells do you _disguise_ a _giant hammer?”_

* * *

The question of heading back to Creation is starting to press on the minds of the green sun princes who remain in the Conventicle. Sasi takes a few days to recover, in which neither Keris nor Testolagh wind up raising the question of what exactly she had been doing to herself for the play.

Keris can guess, though. From the way Sasi had acted, she seemed to believe that she was Elanora. She was a good liar, but that good? It’s a concerning question, and one she tries not to give much thought to. If nothing else, she consoles herself, whatever gift it is will probably make Sasi safer in the Realm.

In the meantime, Keris takes a good look at her new manse. It’s a peculiar place, called the Topless Tower. And that name surprised her, because it clearly had a top from the outside - a gold-walled five storey tower with amethysts embedded in the walls. It’s located fairly close to the casino where Keris had made her fortune from Yuula; not far from the gate into the Conventicle. She sighs. Well, you can only expect so much from the Street of Golden Lanterns. The inside is a lavish golden interior, lit by the titular lanterns. After flopping on the very comfortable bed she finds, she heads upstairs.

Things are totally different. Below was a decadent golden palace; the second floor is rich with many brightly coloured wall hangings. The beds are topped with furs of strange creatures from the Endless Desert - the sound has changed and she hears different music from the outside.

And she’s on the ground floor. Having gone up a floor. Opening the door, Keris stares wide-eyed at the towering mountain range of the outer walls of Malfeas, a pass cut through a collapsed section that leads out into the endless desert.

Huh. But. She. She screws her eyes shut, and heads downstairs. Only to find her somewhere else entirely; a basement full of eyeless gold automata working around the hearthstone room. She attunes to the place - her new manse - then heads back into the desert floor, frowning. 

She takes the stairs up again. Another ground floor. The walls are pulsing meat; the air smells of sweat and sex, and the curtains are golden hair. Outside is a distillery district, where strange alchemical brews are made from a chained-down behemoth. And she heads up again, to find an _entirely too lewd_ level where every wall is a graphic mural and there are countless explicit statues demonstrating demons coupling. And again, this time into a strange echoing space of white stone which is shockingly sparse and bare.

Finally, the next floor up is the one she started on. Having climbed up five storeys, to wind up where she started.

“My head hurts,” Sirelmiya mutters in her head. Which is also hurting.

Dulmea sighs. “It is merely a curved space within the Street,” she explains. “Pay no heed to it. The Unquestionable one snakes through Hell as she wishes - and she has said that this tower opens onto many places. It is a fine gift, child. I can see many uses for this place - think how fast you can get back to the Desert now, without having to rely on Ligier’s sky-bridges.”

“And I can see many uses for those beds in pleasing Sasimana,” Sirelmiya contributes helpfully. “And those fascinating devices left lying around.”

Dulmea sighs. “Not a place for the children, I suspect,” she says.

Keris nods, as she stares out the window. Definitely not a place for the children. Not that Eko would willingly come here.

… when she puts it like that, she can already see the benefits.

* * *

Sasi had scheduled her departure for the sixteenth of Ascending Air, and so the question of her Calibration present hung in the back of everyone’s minds. Then came the suggestion that Keris offer an invitation for ‘an intimate party’ where Sasi was clear in suggesting that Keris arrange childcare for the twins. Staring at herself in the mirror of the lavish bathroom of her new manse, she gets ready.

“I’m _not_ nervous,” the woman in the mirror says to her. She has a few new piercings - a particularly pretty vitriol-silver tongue stud that Sasi is going to love, a thin ring through her low lip that accents her scars, and... a few lower and more intimately-placed ones that should enhance sensation.

So she’ll probably enjoy this _physically_ , no matter what else happens; good or bad.

“I’m not,” insists the mirror-woman again. She’s gathered a truly extortionate number of gifts and trinkets from her many admirers on this trip to Hell. She’ll need to see about keeping such pretty things available back in Creation. Maybe make herself a pretty bathroom and dressing room where she can hide her Hellish accoutrements. Keris spares a moment to be thankful that Hermione is still in Creation. This would be exactly the kind of time she’d show up and poke at how...

... okay, yes, fine, she is kind of nervous. Testolagh’s place in Sasi’s life is one that Keris generally tries to avoid thinking about entirely, and while there’s been a certain amount of chemistry there ever since their celebration of Aiko’s birth, _acting_ on it is threatening to throw the careful structure of compartmentalisation she’s set up out of balance.

She brushes down her dress. It’s red and gold, with silver accents - a variant on her first and fondest dress from back in Nexus that she’s worked Harbourite additions into. It’s also tight enough around her upper body that Keris had to weave herself into it; showing off the presence of two of her new piercings to a perceptive eye. She made sure to design it with deliberately weakened tear-lines for easy removal, that she can easily fix up later if she ever wants to wear it again.

The toll of the door is sonorous. One deep breath, and she nods to herself. “Okay,” she tells her mirror-self. “Here they are. Wish me luck.” She blows herself a kiss, and retreats before her reflection gets any funny ideas about replying.

She sweeps to the doors, throwing them wide open. Sasi sparkles in a snow white dress that almost seems to glow in the golden light all around them, while Testolagh - looking slightly awkward - is in sleek black. She strongly suspects Sasi dressed him, because it shows style that he simply normally doesn’t show.

“Oh, Keris,” Sasi says fondly, as Keris kisses them both in greeting, then takes them to the seats and pours the wine. “So nice of you to invite us... to an intimate little soiree in your beautiful new manse. You look ravishing, my love.” 

Testolagh nods, biting his lip fractionally as he looks her up and down. “You look very beautiful,” he says. A glance down indicates that if he wasn’t already enjoying Sasi’s company, he’s appreciating her.

Keris embraces her love, and then - a little more hesitantly - him. “You too,” she says, the statement covering both of them without having to compliment him specifically. “Are, um...”

She bites her lip, and jerks a little in surprise as her teeth find the thin ring of silver. Sasi laughs quietly, and Keris blushes.

“Oh, I have an exotic itinerary for us to explore,” Sasi says with a smile, turning to reveal to Keris that her dress is backless and dips low enough to reveal she’s wearing nothing under it. “Like me. And you. And Tessie. Do you like the dress?” 

“Makers, yes,” Keris exhales.

“A gift from Ipithymia, just like this place. And my my, I can see very pleasurable things that came with this princely reward. We should try them out.” She eases Keris into her seat, then sits between her and Testolagh. “But first! A toast each!” She raises her glass.

“To us! To the three of us, and long may we have happiness together!”

Testolagh nods. “To families,” he says, “even if they’re strange.”

“To kin,” Keris says simply. “And the clans of kin, and the bonds that tie us together.”

They drink.

Then Sasi leans over, and presses lips that taste of wine to Keris’s, kissing her deeply. She breaks it off, then leans the other way, to kiss Testolagh just as deeply. 

“Shall we?” she asks, a little nervous catch in her voice.

Keris spreads her hands across Sasi’s back, feels the soft layer of fat and the play of muscle under the skin. Her hair moves like a nest of snakes; sinuously winding around the three of them; pulling apart pale thighs and capturing battle-scarred wrists.

“Let’s take it to the bedroom,” she whispers.

* * *

Several hours later, Keris is lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling. Some of the things they did earlier are painted up there. Sasi is facing her, asleep on her left arm, lipstick smeared over her face. From the other side, she can hear Testolagh’s louder breathing as he spoons his... her... their girlfriend.

Keris is too tired to bother lifting her head and look, so all she can do is try to judge from his breathing and his heartbeat whether he’s awake or not.

... nope, dead to the world. _Men,_ honestly. Sasi might be - in the best possible way - a complete physical wimp, but he’s got as much endurance as her. But noooo, a few orgasms and he’s passed out and useless.

Well, okay, fine, more than ‘a few’. She hadn’t really been keeping track of the exact number, but she supposes she can give him a pass this once. She yawns a little, shifts away from a jutting elbow, and then very carefully and deliberately doesn’t freeze, or gasp, or stiffen, or tense up, or react in any way whatsoever to the prickle along her spine.

There is someone else in the room with them. 

Keris is certain of this. It’s someone who isn’t breathing, someone who has no smell, someone she can’t see in all the shadows and the incense-haze - but someone is there. She can feel it in the way the hairs on back of her neck are raising on end, and in the sudden flush to her cheeks.

Without sound, the hooks and knives and needles in her hair slide out. Calling on her spear or Ascending Air would betray her knowledge of the lurker - the flash of light would give her away, and without a pinpoint location she can’t risk a single attack. But Keris is never completely unarmed. Not even at a time like this.

She rolls over, a little murmuring sound giving the impression she’s still asleep and sated; dead to the world and entirely unaware of her unannounced guest.

Then she rolls her to feet in an instant and a hail of poisoned steel and silver fills the room.

It’s surprisingly quiet. But then, there are no great crashing clubs or hammers here - just needles pinging off the painted murals and knifeblades sinking into cushioned seats. Keris herself aims towards the corner she’s most sure about; hands gaping with fangs and slamming shut on...

... nothing.

No sounds of anything hitting flesh. No body for her teeth to find. The strange and certain presence still there, but devoid of any form.

She gulps. Could this be...

“... my lady?” she tries. Her voice is quiet. Careful. Tense.

Something warm embraces her from behind her, too many limbs settling into just two, tarry warmth becoming skin that rounds out to breasts that are pressed into her shoulders. “Please don’t scream,” a honey-soft, Realm-accepted voice whispers, a voice rich with seductive promise. A voice that sounds like Sasi in her most self-indulgent. Rounded lips brush her ear. Dark-skinned hands hold her tight, one of them creeping lower. “You’ll wake my lady. And I’ve wanted to meet you for so long, Keris.”

Keris does not scream. She _does_ , in a fluid motion that shouldn’t really be possible for something with a spine, slide out of the embrace and whirl around to pin the woman. She has the stranger up against the wall with all four limbs hair-pinned out against the stone before the voice registers and the words make sense.

“... _Seresa?”_ Keris whispers in a leap of intuition, looking her prisoner up and down incredulously.

She’s tall; she looks like a negative of Sasi, all dark hair and dark skin and bluish lips that smile widely. “She does so appreciate how clever you can be,” Seresa says, twisting in the embrace with seductive grace. She can’t escape, but she doesn’t want to and the motions she’s making aren’t actually helping her get free. “Mmm. Don’t stop.”

Blinking at her, Keris casts a wild look at Sasi, then back at her prisoner. Her naked... shapely... gorgeous... squirming...

Keris looks back at Sasi. It’s safer that way. “She said she hadn’t even figured how to make lesser demons!” she hisses. “How the hell are you out here?”

Seresa smiles a little too widely. It has something of Haneyl’s smiles in it. She has more teeth than Sasi does. “She might not have realised how to do it, but we did,” she says. “Eko’s notes were very useful. Even if,” she shrugs, “it was a little scary to find there were sections directly addressed to me and Kalaska in them. And then, well.”

She looks over at the sleeping Sasi and Testolagh, then overtly eyes up the post-coital Keris.

“You made the earth move, and cracked a wall in our prison. You called.” She licks her lips. “I came.”

Keris blushes. “Let’s... take this to another room,” she mumbles. “And put clothes on.” Her hair is what’s holding Seresa to the wall, and as she pulls it back she closes the fanged maws her hands have become and lays the left one on the woman’s cheek.

“I don’t think the clothes are necessary, really,” Seresa says, copying Keris’s gesture. “They’ve fallen asleep, and I just can’t bear to see you lying there awake.” She roles her name around, “Kerisssssss.”

Keris can feel the creeping shadow, tainted by hunger. Seresa is an oozing thing, a creature of hot nights and strong appetites. She’s as powerful as Keris’s own souls, too - and the outer layers feel a lot like Calesco. But while Calesco is piercing brightness under her shadows, Seresa is nothing but accepting, warm shadows all the way through. Accepting like a mouth, or like... well, other places. 

And that’s what she is; appetites. She’s Sasi’s hungers given form. If Haneyl wants wealth and Zanara loves art in all ways, every move from Seresa screams that she wants to indulge. She wants Keris, and she wants to taste Keris’s cooking, and she probably wants to finish off the last of the wine they’d abandoned back in the other room.

No wonder she escaped here, in this manse. The entire place is almost a temple to the part of Sasi she represents.

((TED essence flavoured with Metagaos, E6 - Urge: Indulge in all Life’s Pleasures))

If it were any other day, any other time, it might have worked. But Keris is as sated as she’s been in... well, a week or so, since the Unquestionable’s box, but months before that. Her libido is curled up and purring in happy contentment; its interest at an all-time low.

She steps back.

“Okay,” she agrees. “But this is your first time out in the world. You might still have a caul on you - and if you’ve worn it away, you’re exposed to Hell’s environment for the first time ever. Don’t you want some food for your first meal out in the world, and a massage to get you over the birthing pains? I bet it wasn’t comfortable getting out through the cracks.”

Seresa pouts. “Damn. Sasi had all the fun. She’s so selfish.” Shadows roil around her, and she’s now a different woman with midnight-blue waist-length hair, wearing a silk dressing gown. It’s golden, to match the general themes of this place. “And yes. I had to squeeze myself down so small to creep out the cracks. And got caught several times.” She smiles. “Your shadow was a very comfy place to nap to recover, though.”

Keris smiles as she leads the way out of the room, stooping to pick up a silk robe on the way. She takes her up two storeys, back to the golden level - far enough away that the others won’t hear them talk. “Haneyl complained about the same thing. Here, take my hand. I can learn a bit more about you.”

There is not, it transpires, a caul on Seresa. Or even any trace of a recent one, which Keris takes as evidence in favour of them forming when the soul is born, and not when they’re externalised. Keris won’t be getting her own as an ingredient unless Sasi births any new souls - or unless she does, she supposes.

Regardless, she gets the demon sat down in a sinfully luxurious armchair, tasks one of the golden automata to give her a foot massage, and gives her a bowl of grapes to tide her over while Keris cooks.

“So, you and Kalaska have worked out demon-making, then?” she starts with. “What kinds? Anything special?”

Seresa flaps a hand in her direction. “Oh, Kalaksa has her silly glass foxes. I don’t know what’s up with that girl. But I made some just darling living shadows that eat shadows to find a place to hide. I’m calling them the Inky Spies. They say I need a more fancy name, but I don’t feel like that.” She wiggles her toes. “Oh, I have dreamed of this,” she says, pouring herself another glass of wine. It’s her third.

Keris’s eyes narrow a little at the mention of Kalaska. But she doesn’t let it enter her voice as she puts pans onto heat and digs root-fingers into ingredients and shakes spices into pots with her hair. “And the others? Sasi’s told me about your siblings, but it’s been a while, and she’s always very sparse...”

It’s not hard to get Seresa talking. In fact, she turns out to be something of an extrovert, and goes on at length about Marenolo’s incessant _questions_ and Moneha always thinking about tiresome things like money and deals, and how La is such a frightful _bore_ , honestly...

The servitor is dismissed as Keris comes back to sit next to Seresa, and offers a bowl of rich cake swimming in chocolate sauce and cinnamon and cream. The bowl is made of solid gold, but then again all the bowls here are like that.

“You poor thing,” she murmurs. “It must be terrible cooped up in that... what did you call it? That _prison_.”

“Well, I don’t know what else to call it?” Seresa says. There’s an inconstancy to her face as she examines the cake with wide eyes, as if her mouth can’t quite decide how big it wants to be. Delicately, she pops a bite in, and actually, literally, moans. “Oh, Keris, that’s scrumptious! Just scrumptious! The best food I have ever eaten!” Her voice quavers, and she immediately takes another bite, letting out another moan. “Oh, I haven’t thanked you and Haneyl enough for teaching Sasimana how to _taste_ like this, but trust me, I will!” She swallows, melting like the chocolate. “And it’s certainly a prison! I have one room, Keris, smaller than this! And no cake like this! No, no, not at all! And trust me when I say that visiting La for booty calls gets tiresome when he insists on praying to the Yozis when he’s meant to be focussing on pounding you!”

Keris’s face is sympathetic. “Her coadjutor,” she murmurs, remembering how her own Domain had shrunk so when she’d been on the outs with Dulmea. “Sasi doesn’t... get along with him? You and Kalaska and La, you all just have one little room in there?”

The demoness is more focussed on the cake. “If you can call it a room! I couldn’t even fit in a proper sized bed! It only fits three! And Mu Nenra is such a whiner. Which I suppose is appropriate because he’s a wasp, but he’s also some idiotic jousting champion or something. Always wanting her to be more rash and getting on my back just because I want Sasimana to relax and enjoy herself.” She sniffs, and takes another bite of cake. “I’m the only one who cares about how _she_ feels,” she mourns melodramatically, draping herself back as her other hand goes to her brow. She sniffs. “Of course, he’s a mere First Circle, and has ideas quite above his station,” she adds, peevishly.

“Mmm,” Keris says. “You know what, Seresa? I think I might be able to help you out there. _My_ inner world is huge - maybe Sasi’s told you about Haneyl’s Direction? If I gathered up materials from every Direction in my domain, and a chip or two from the arcane map at its centre, and maybe a few other bits and pieces... do you think you could talk Kalaska and Marenolo into studying them, and keep the others off their backs while they do? Or even get all of you working together on it! After all, if they figure out a way to reweave the laws and rules that govern Sasi’s inner world, you’d get out of that poky little room and have _kilometres_ of space to play with; all your own.”

Seresa’s eyes light up at that, and she sticks her forkload of cake in her mouth so she can clasp her hands together. “Oh, darling, that would be wonderful,” she exclaims around the cake. She tilts her head. “And I do believe I should really be coming with you to that _very_ fun-sounding island of Saata,” she adds. “After all, Sasimana got Haneyl as an assistant, so it’s really your turn to get one of Sasimana’s souls and I’m here now. Oh, there’s so many _wonderful_ things to learn about the world. Things that would get very un-fun if horrid Dynasts decided to get in my face just because I’m a demon lady. “

Keris tilts her head and considers the demon before her.

And she is a demon. That’s what Keris has concluded over the course of this conversation - Seresa isn’t like Calesco or Haneyl. She’s like Sirelmiya. She’s like Asarin. There’s none of the humanity to her that Keris’s children have; she’s very much a spirit. Concerned only with her own domain, melodramatic and a little selfish - though prone to kindness and sympathy as long as it doesn’t interfere with her pleasures.

It’s... oddly unsettling, Keris finds. Like seeing Sasi drunk or blissed out of her mind on sex; a side of her that’s completely exposed and open without anything to counterbalance it. Is... is that what Sasi’s souls are? Keris’s children are born from parts of her self - her joy, her greed, her compassion. But Sasi’s... Keris thinks Sasi’s might be the faces she wears instead. Sasi the frightened child. Sasi the blasphemous priestess.

Sasi the self-indulgent decadent, here in front of her now. She’s not a child of Sasi; part of her mixed with part of something else. She’s... one of the masks that Sasi wears. One of five or six that all fight over the same face.

“I don’t see why not,” Keris says, her lips curling in a smile. “But I’ll need to summon you for that. Either by asking Sasi for permission, or just getting it from you.”

Seresa smiles at that. “Oh, darling,” she says. “Don’t worry about that. I’m very good at persuading her. The only risk is she might be desolate without me - which is of course entirely the correct way to feel when stripped of my magnificent presence - but for a season or two before her visit in Wood, it should be a triviality!” She smiles. “Keris, trust me, you’ll be able to summon me any time you want.”

Keris grins at her. “Excellent,” she says. “Now then, how about a massage once you finish that cake?”

“Darling, I’ve seen what your massages do to Sasimana. Do you really think I’d turn that down?”

* * *

Not all things are so pleasurable in the run-up to Keris’s departure from Hell. She has one meeting she’s been putting off. And off. And off.

Ligier sits in his throne, glorious in brazen armour. Beside him Lilunu has her place, in a dress woven from rainbows. Keris kneels before them.

“Do I have it quite straight?” Ligier says, in a voice that is icy cold. “That ship I wrought for you, that masterpiece that nothing in the world We have been denied should be able to match, has been damaged by wretched _Dead_ things?” His eyes burn. “Do I hear you correctly, Keris?”

“My lord,” she says, prostrating herself, “it came under attack by a terrible force. Four of the Greater Dead, leading a force of lesser ghosts and yidak, all empowered and given direction by the yoke of a new and hungry Deathlord. There are no legends about it in the area, no stories to account for its presence - I estimate it has come to power within the last fifty years.”

She dares a glance up. “Even so, despite the numbers, your work prevailed, my lord,” she adds. “The _Baisha_ fended off their ambush; the Greater Dead monster that boarded was slain, and their fleet was diverted and weakened by the battle. Had the creatures not hidden themselves within mortal bodies, the damage would have been even less - and that tactic will not work as well a second time, now that we know to guard for it.”

The aura in the room is still not pleased. She gulps, and ventures a little further. “Not only that, but we know of the threat now. A deathlord who can field forces in that number, and hide them so deviously? A deathlord so young, too, who has not had time to gather power or lay down heavy fortresses. It is...” not ‘good’, _good_ is not the word for this disaster... “valuable information to have gained, my lord.”

“Well, then.” Ligier smiles, but there isn’t much humour in it. “What will you do, Director Duleamdokht? Because this is in your area of operations, and I do believe that these wretched rotting things have insulted _my_ work.”

Keris bares her teeth.

“I’m going to _murder them all_ ,” she snarls. “I’m going to wipe out their entire pathetic tribe. I’m going to smash their homeland and gut their patron and turn the whole Anarchy against them. And when I’ve reduced them to penniless vagabonds drifting on their raft-cities without a shore to go back to, I’m going to set the fleets of Saata against them and drive them north into the teeth of Triumphant Air. Let the Realm do something useful for once, and bleed its Navy out on the rotting Dead.”

That’s when Ligier smiles, and when Lilunu sees that she smiles too, with a hint of relief. “Strong words, little Keris. Strong words and pretty ones.” He leans towards her, one elbow resting on a knee, chin resting on the back of his hand. “You are quite skilled at putting on pleasing entertainment. But will you be able to deliver?”

Rising enough to bow again, Keris meets his eye. “I will deliver vengeance for the insult to your work, my lord,” she says. “And I will bring you back a brace of hearts carved out of the Zu Tak Greater Dead as recompense. My word on it.”

Lilunu clears her throat. “So where will you start, Keris?” she asks.

Keris purses her lips and thinks about it for a moment.

Then she smiles, cold and vicious.

“My lord, my lady,” she says. “There is a city in the Anarchy so vile; so drenched in sin and scum that even the dregs of Saata look down on it. And yet the pirates dare not move against it, and the sea lanes pay it taxes, for it has weapons that broke a Realm fleet a century past. And now its lord is old and frail and would do anything, anything at all, to prolong his life a little more.”

She tosses her hair and smirks.

“I’ll start with Ca Map, on the doorstep of the Wailing Fen. A staging point to crush them from, and stop them fleeing south.”


	5. Chapter 5

Ca Map!

Den of thieves! Warren of vice! Wretched cesspit of the Anarchy! Below, an artificial island of lashed-together boats and debris heaves with human misery and suffering. Atop, ancient platforms of antiquity gleam with wealth and gardens and trinkets stolen by the pirate lords too awful for Saata.

From atop one of the floating platforms of the rich, Keris shields her eyes against the setting sun and looks out across the Anarchy. The sparkling waters shimmer in the sun, clear in places, choked with sargasso in others. For a moment, she imagines that she can see the ship Rathan and Haneyl are using for their voyages down South. Oh, her babies, all off together with no one there but Haneyl’s handpicked Lionesses and the owlriders and various disreputable pirates she’s picked up. 

She hopes they’re safe and getting on and not trying to kill each other. And eating well. And getting enough rest.

Behind her, a lushly curvy Tengese woman sips on a drink. Keris has bound the demoness within her authority over the Tengese triad, and this has put certain limits on her. But Seresa doesn’t mind too much - and she gleefully seduced a minor pirate princeling to get them access to the upper layers. Keris decided to take her with her so she could be useful, but also because she didn’t trust her left alone on Saata. She had been sulking ever since Haneyl turned down her propositions with a disgusted “But you’re part of Mother!”.

Delicate harp music plays - the work of Teveya, Dulmea’s student - and Oula and one of the new dragon aides play a dice game. Everything is quiet and peaceful up here.

Too bad Keris can hear the city down below.

“We should burn this place to the ground,” she grits out, bearing her teeth. “Or do what I did last time. Let the red wind come again and slaughter them all.” Her hair stirs restlessly, hooks and needles sliding out from where they’re hidden in locks and braids.

Oula abandons her game, rising up to wrap a comforting arm around Keris’s shoulder. She’s cooler than a human would be. “Remember the plan, aunty,” she says softly. “We need this place right now to pen in the Zu Tak. And once you control it, you’ll be able to put spies in here. You’ll be able to find who actually profits. This place overlooks the coast and can slowly choke, slowly _poison_ the slave trade. But if we go openly and disrupt things, they’ll rally the for-hire dragonchildren and the gods who profit from this and they’ll take this place back. Or ruin it. Or worse, the Zu Tak might take it.”

Keris bares her teeth. “I still don’t like it,” she growls. Erda - Rounen’s dragon aide - doesn’t seem as upset or empathetic. But then, that’s why Rounen selected him for this. He’s more like Testolagh than Keris - he has his virtues, but a soft heart isn’t one of them. A place like Ca Map won’t drive him mad.

Digging her nails into her palms, Keris opens them as mouths and bites down, letting the pain in her flesh distract her from the pain in her heart.

_“Fine,”_ she hisses. “They get to live. For now. But once the Zu Tak are gone, we _will_ strangle them to death.”

“Your majesty,” Erda says, with a flip of his sunflower-yellow hair, “please, you can trust me at this. You won’t have to think about this place. Out of sight, out of mind - yes?”

She purses her lips, but agrees. “Yes. You have my orders on what to encourage and stamp down on? He’ll be loyal to me - and dependent on my drugs - so you’ll have plenty of levers to pull if he starts getting out of hand.”

“Of course, your majesty, of course,” he says with a gracious bow. He gives a happy shiver. “Your majesty, I am the first and foremost of your servants here. I will handle this man for you. Why, I’m second only to perhaps Rounen in...”

Oula smiles.

“... Rounen _of my kind_ in how useful I am to you.” He nods, and adjusts his dark Spiresglass shades. “You can trust me in this.”

((*snicker*))

Keris allows a faint smile to drift onto her face, and gives him a regal nod. “This posting will be critical,” she agrees. “You will keep watch on the sea lanes and prompt the Despot to deny the Zu Tak any passage south - and to destroy any of their disgusting Dead-ridden fleets that come too close. Penning them in will be a key part of our war to exterminate them.”

He shivers again in pleasure at the thought of that.

Seresa smiles. “Well, Keris, darling,” she says, fanning herself. “What I’d like to know is how you managed to get all the most fun bits of the operational area from Sasimana. I love this place, just like Saata. Why did she wind up in dull, dull _dull_ An Teng, where they have to keep everything interesting behind closed doors or reserved for the tourists?”

Frowning, Keris sighs. “Technically, she _did_ have this area. Sasi was in charge of the whole Southwest - I’ve just got the Lower Southwest. She set up in An Teng, but this was meant to be her turf too. I was working for her when I was in Saata at first. She stayed in An Teng because it was the major power along the coastal trade routes, I think.”

She sighs morosely. “N’then Deveh got her kicked out and took An Teng for himself. Dick.” The lethal weapons in her hair rustle again, before quickly withdrawing as she hears a servant approach.

Oula, for her part, is leaning over the edge. She’s clearly having similar thoughts to Keris earlier. “I wonder where Rathan is right now and what he’s doing,” she says. “And whether Haneyl is bullying him.”

Keris smiles fondly. “I doubt she can afford to bully him too hard,” she points out. “After all; he’s the one steering the ship. If she upsets him too much, she won’t get to go to all the dens of vice and villainy she wants to sink her roots into.” She cocks her head. “Can you feel where they are? He has your heart, after all.”

Oula nods immediately. “That way,” she says instantly, pointing roughly south west, at an angle to the setting sun. She smiles faintly. “I can hear the song of my heart still. It would be so easy to return to it. To see him again.” She sighs.

“Huh.” Keris thinks on that for a moment. “Can you feel a way to get back to the Domain, too?”

That not only gets her a look from Oula, but also from Erda. “Of course,” Oula says. “I can always feel the way home.”

“It’s... it’s always there,” Erda adds. “You mean you can’t?”

Keris smiles fondly. “I can’t go there myself, remember?” she points out. “I can meditate my way in, but my body still stays out here. It’s within me, after all. You can’t put a box inside itself.”

She tugs a braid thoughtfully. “Still... that’s interesting,” she adds. “If you can get to Rathan by going to your heart, and get back into me by going to the Domain... with a summoning, that’s a one-night turnaround for you to get from me to him and back. It might be worth practicing that later. It could prove useful someday.”

There’s a gleam in Oula’s eyes that suggests that she’s very interested in the prospect of that - and boyfriend time.

“Well, are there any messages you want me to send before you make the offer?” she asks enthusiastically, with the glee of the new-trained sorceress who’s just been taught the Infallible Messenger. “Any last moment warnings or orders?”

Keris rolls her eyes fondly. But nods. “Send him a Messenger filling him in on our progress here and when we expect to leave,” she orders. “And tell him to remind Haneyl not to get so caught up in enjoying herself that she forgets she’s down there to build contacts.”

Oula nods, spreading her arms wide as she leans further over the side. Her tattoos start to glow from within, moving under her skin like living things. Her hair sways in an unseen breeze, and she traces a glowing red circle in the air that hangs there.

The empty circle. The mark of what Keris is.

“ ** _Upon the will of my mistress, I have made you. Now seek out Rathan, my love, my heartbearer, prince of the red moon, and tell him this;_** Rathan, my beloved, your mother and I are in Ca Map. We are working to-”

Seresa has a pout on her generous lips as she sees Oula cast. “You can learn too, you know,” Keris murmurs to her, watching approvingly as Oula instructs her cherub. It glows with a shifting light whose patterns mingle Rathan’s pinkish moonlight refracted through her tattoos with the bloody hues of Keris’s anima - steadily brightening as it absorbs the message and grows close to being sent off.

The demon lord only sighs extravagantly. “She’s already more powerful than she’s meant to be,” Seresa says sulkily. “Very well, let her be a sorceress too! Why not?”

Keris favours her with a long, evaluative look that has a silent weight to it.

“For someone so insistent on everyone being allowed to enjoy themselves,” she murmurs after a moment, “that’s a strangely restrictive attitude to take. Weren’t you just complaining about how dull An Teng was, that they have all those rules about what people are and aren’t allowed to do or be?”

Seresa only sinks deeper into her seat, slurping her drink. “That’s completely different, and you know it,” she mutters, but it’s clear she has no interest in arguing. Keris already knows well that Seresa doesn’t like confrontation. Almost as much as she dislikes being denied things that other people have. But not in the same way Haneyl does.

Haneyl is also not exactly happy that Oula is the first of Keris’s sorceresses, but that’s led her to redoubling her efforts and reading everything she can find - or steal - about sorcery. Not sitting around pouting.

Keris lets it go, and watches as Oula completes her spell and sends the glowing empty circle shooting off - to the south-west, just as she’d said. When she turns back to her teacher with a beaming smile of pride, Keris favours her with a nod of praise, and she glows.

“Good work,” she says. “And with any luck, Rathan will come back with some spellbooks. There are some that I’ve heard of that’ll be a lot more useful to you than they are to me - Stormwind Rider, for instance, to give you some travelling speed. And there’s probably one for disguising yourself behind other faces like I do with my shadow.”

Oula claps her hands together. “Yes, my teacher,” she says, with a pretty little curtsey. “Now, I think it’s time for you and,” she glances cattily at Seresa, “the decadent over there to get to work. Who knows what wonders you can achieve? I await a display of the powers of a demon lord with utmost anticipation.”

Perhaps it might be time to gently remind Oula she should stop sassing demon lords who aren’t Keris’s souls.

* * *

The querulous wheezing of an old man is the only sound in the small room. The Depot of Ca Map, Tuyet Alka, was once a feared scavenger lord and pirate king. But to look at him, such things are long in the past. This man who burned a Realm fleet and who tricked the secrets of this lighthouse complex from the gods is as bald as a boiled egg, his watery eyes behind bottle-thick spectacles. His inner sanctum is rich with extortionate treasures, but he can no longer walk and spends his days in his bed and his wheelchair. He is nearly blind - and palsied, too, with a hacking cough that will not heal. His pet sorceress - an oni of the south - keeps him alive, but his body is dying even while his mind remains sharp.

And he has not told anyone of the note that was left. This note that promises him so much. Perhaps it is another trap - but the universities of Saata and the secrets of the Lintha alike haven’t saved him from this fate. He is desperate. Desperate enough to call upon necromancers.

Desperate enough to sit up in his sanctum, staring at the candleflame, reading his books by touch as he waits for the midnight hour.

A cough interrupts him - a hacking, wheezing thing, from a throat as old as his own. The balcony. He looks over, squinting through his glasses.

There are two women there, which should be impossible. After all, they’re at the top of a sheer-walled tower, and the balcony itself is warded against entry. And yet, there they are. Two women - ancient crones, with paper-like skin and stringy hair and milky eyes; sharp-nosed and toothless, bent-backed and leaning on canes. One is pale-haired, the other dark grey, and they both wear roughspun cloaks of undyed cloth.

“Despot of Ca Map,” croaks one. His eyes aren’t good enough to tell which.

“You seek youth,” coughs the other. “Vigour renewed. The secrets of immortality.”

“We can offer this,” the first continues. They talk like they’re one being; passing the sentences off to each other with perfect fluidity.

“But what will you pay?”

((Keris is using Heartwood’s Patronage.))  
((His price is immortality and eternal youth. Quite a high price, the fucker, but he’s already found that just extended life without youth sucks.))  
((Smart man, heh. Not that it will help him against Keris and Seresa being the dramatic hoes that they are.))

He breaks into a hacking cough. “Pretty words, crones,” he says, wiping his mouth with a shaking hand. “But that hasn’t done much for you hags, has it?” His accent is thick and northern, from the Hook.

Two rasping chuckles meet his words.

And then the pair of them throw off their cloaks, and with them their years. The steel-haired, hunchbacked one straightens until she stands tall and womanly; decadent curves traced out in dark skin and ink-black hair. The frail and wispy one fills out; strength returning to her petite frame as her white locks turn long and rich and red. They are young and strong and beautiful; the scents of honey and cinnamon filling the room, and they saunter across to him with a seductive sway.

“Are you so sure?” asks the redhead, her tone both mocking and promising as her companion drapes herself across his table.

He’s holding surprisingly strong. “Wouldn’t be the first time a trickster spirit thought to get something out of me.” He breaks into a wheezing cackle. “You gods still haven’t forgiven me!”

“Oh, we are not gods,” the dark-haired beauty on his desk purrs, tracing his cheek with a smooth, warm finger. “You’re right. They would never offer such a thing as this.”

“But if you doubt,” said the petite one, “take this free of charge, and see that we tell the truth.” She produces a vial, downs half the contents to demonstrate its trustworthiness, and offers it to his mouth. “It will cure your eyes - restore them to the sharp sight of youth. And if we can do that... why, the rest of you is not beyond our power, is it?”

He takes a breath, swallows, and drinks.

It’s a thing to watch, cataracts melting away from a man’s eyes. They’re clear once more, no longer misted over, and he barely grunts in pain. With a shaking hand, he pulls down his glasses - and lets them fall from his face, to smash on the ground. “Ach,” he breaths, looking at their faces. Focuses on them. “How long has it been since I saw like this?”

“Decades,” murmurs the dark-haired beauty - and she _is_ a beauty, he can see that now; gorgeous and lush and alluring. “So long, since you gazed on the pleasures of the world.”

“And now your eyes are as they were when you were a young man,” the redhead smiles. She knows she has him. “Wouldn’t you like to have your old strength as well?” She removes another silver vial from somewhere in the tight sarong she wears, dangling it tantalisingly between her fingers.

((Lol, 6 successes on his Reaction + Occult. Clearly his ability to see is helping.))

His now-clear eyes narrow. “There’s black in my candle flame,” he says, staring at the almost unseen halo that sits around the light. “And you, woman - you have angyalka-blood. Or perhaps you’re pretending to be merely a demon spawn.” He fumbles for a jewelled monocle in one pocket, and holds it over an eye with a shaking hand. “As I thought. Demons, I name you.”

Annoying. But not unplanned for. Keris tilts her head, and lets Rathan’s moonlight halo her.

“We are,” she agrees. “But when the gods cursed you to age and frailty, and we offer succour - when the Realm looks down on Ca Map, yet fears to approach it... what do you care for our nature? We are here to offer you youth, vitality, eternal life. Will you refuse, oh Despot, when the cure to age you’ve sought for years is right in front of you for the taking?”

“What’s yer price for this, demons?” he demands.

“Oh, nothing you will hate to give,” purrs Seresa - so tempting, so good at lulling men into degeneracy. “We will not ask for your power, or your sovereignty, or your wealth. We will not take precious things from your vaults, or bid you stir from your throne.”

“We will require only this,” says Keris, something fierce and dark and hungry in her eyes. “That you bar the loathsome Dead from passing south, and destroy any Zu Tak ship that sails near your port. That you allow them no quarter to the sea lanes you guard, and purge their fingers from your city.”

“Do this little thing - who cares for the Dead?” Seresa whispers. “And you will have all you wish, and more.”

He laughs at that, which turns once again into a hacking cough. That damned wyldgrowth in his lungs. “Cheat the Dead to cheat death? Fine, then! Fine!” And Keris feeds him the youthdraught; distilled from her own quicksilver blood, the plants and poisons that in another brew make up age-staving cordials, and the sap of long-lived trees.

His head flops back. His back arches. He goes into convulsions.

And the great work of decades reverses itself. At first it is slow; lines pulling themselves tighter, skin plumping out, his too-thin wrists gaining weight. But then his egg-bald head starts to sprout hair again. It’s like watching a child grow up in a weird way, as he goes from a bald, helpless creature to a man in his late middle years. There’s dissipation and cruelty in those old eyes, in that aquiline nose - but it’s not finished. Younger and younger he gets, wiping away years like sand and dirt from a fresco.

Until the man who sits in the chair is someone in the prime of youth, jet black hair hanging shaggy around his face, a nose that’s squint from being broken and healing, a healthy plumpness to his cheeks. Sitting up, he sheds his sleeping robe to reveal a scarred, yet youthful torso. Only the faded old tattoos are a sign that he’s had those marks for nearly a century.

“Well,” Alka says, before ruining it once again with wheezing. He jabs the air. “Haven’t... felt like this in fifty years. Maybe longer. Though you didn’t cure the wyldgrowth.”

“No,” Keris says. “That will take more. I _have_ such a drug - but it will cost you. And while you are young again through our arts; the Loom of Fate is cruel. You will need more drugs to maintain that youth against the riptide of the gods - who hate to see mortal men with the deathless youth they guard so jealously.”

She smiles. “So, Despot. For the wyldgrowths in your lungs, and to keep your youth from being stolen back - I will leave you a servant. One like me; though you must never name him as such. He will keep you supplied, serve you as a bookkeeper; aid you in all things - and you will let him. And when he passes on a... request? You will see to it.”

Another pair of vials - one for the wyldstuff, and the other - not that Alka knows it - for the mercury in his stomach. She smiles, sharp and inviting.

“Have we a deal?”

Alka rises, and stretches, working his once-tired bones. “We do. Yes. Yes.”

Tilting her head, Seresa looks him up and down. “I am actually impressed. When he’s put some muscle back on, he really could be something to look at.”

Keris grins, her teeth a flash of white between red lips as she gives him the vials to fix his lungs and suppress the mercury poisoning he doesn’t know he has. “Well, that could be seen to,” she hints. “I have no such drug on me right now, but I could make one. Strength of limb is not beyond my arts.” She glances over at Seresa with a subtle wink that the Despot cannot see. “And I do know how you like such men, my cousin.”

In the gloomy room, Seresa’s presence swells, and the man seems captivated. “Could you?” he asks. “After all, there are people who would want rid of me - and I’m no use to you dead. I didn’t win this place through brains alone. I had strength too, back then.”

Too, too easy, thinks Keris. And with four or more doses of mercury in him, the symptoms if she ever cuts off the supply of suppressants will be crippling. It’ll be a good hard lesson for him when he starts thinking he can defy her.

“Why don’t I retire to another room to make my brew,” she suggests, “while you entertain him with... possibilities, cousin?”

“One last thing,” the Despot says, already admiring Seresa. “As we are now good friends, there’s a Zu Tak witch and her entourage here. A necromancer - one of the ones I called here to buy me more like. But I don’t need her anymore. Do you want her, or should I accuse her of trying to poison me and have her cast from the side?” He says it in such a plain, simple manner that she doesn’t doubt he’s done it before. “Although a witch could fly...”

Keris narrows her eyes. “Give her to me,” she says darkly. “I will have questions for such a witch. But,” she adds, her expression shifting to a smile, “that can come once your strength is renewed. Cousin? Do keep him entertained.”

Keris gets to work with her hair wrapped around her ears, while Seresa... well, gets to work.

“That was nicely done, child,” Dulmea praises her from within her head. She chuckles. “It has been a very, very rough road, but could you imagine what the you from when we first met would say if she could see you now?”

A soft snort sounds in the little side-room Keris has set up. “Probably a lot of swearing,” she murmurs. “She’d barely recognise me. Well...” She pauses as she titrates some iron solution into the blood-mixture. “That, or the kind of noises I make around Sasi when she turns the Seresa-ness up full blast. I could wind little-me around my finger, probably.”

“Child, you were small, constantly angry and afraid, and very, very petty.” Dulmea sighs. “I had to spend the best part of a week talking you out of just staying in Nexus and stealing small value items.”

Keris pouts. “Wasn’t _my_ fault I didn’t know what a proper score looked like,” she mutters. “If you’d led with the kind of thing I’ve stolen since, I’d’ve been way more open to going along with you.”

“And I was an assassin who’d never talked to humans before - or ever left Hell,” Dulmea points out. “I’ve changed too. And endured one entirely unwanted pregnancy,” she adds in a disgruntled tone.

“I _have_ apologised about that,” Keris pleads. “Like, a whole bunch of times.” She purses her lips at the bubbling brew. “Hmm. He’s as weak as a kitten, for all his renewed youth. In fact, he’s probably weaker than a kitten - I bet Kali could take him. He’s as weak as a Sasi. It’ll take more than one dose to get him up to something mortals would call ‘strong’. Two, do you think? Or three?”

“You know more about these doses,” Dulmea says. “Of course, you know this already. You just want to talk to me while you think.”

“Yeah,” Keris admits with a grin. “You know me so well, mama. Hmm. Three, I think. It won’t get him as strong as he could be - four to five is where he’d start to hit the point of diminishing returns. But compared to most mortals he’ll be a musclebound hulk, and it’ll give him room to feel inadequate and come begging for more. Plus, with six doses of mercury in him... yeah, he’s only gonna try and rebel against me once.”

She slashes a wrist and sets the next tincture up to heat, humming idly to herself. A thought occurs.

“Mama?” she wonders. “Do _you_ want to learn sorcery? It’d mean you could understand when I go on about it - and if my way doesn’t work for you, I bet Sasi’s would. We could probably get some texts in her style for you to read - I still have them hanging around somewhere from when she was teaching me.”

Dulmea hums to herself. “I don’t really see the point of it,” she admits. “Quite apart from the fact that I’m still not comfortable with practicing it myself, it’s not much use for me. I can already shape this world, and it’s not like I can be like little Oula and serve as a message-caller for you.”

“The theory can still be useful, though,” Keris points out. “And your Chords might know it if you did, if you got some of them strong enough. You could help me with research, too.”

When Dulmea makes no response, she shrugs with artful carelessness. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to. But I’ll help if you ever do.”

* * *

It’s the early hours of the morning in Ca Map, and the stars twinkle in the black sky. Keris sits on the roof of a building, kicking her legs. Oula is with her, and so is Teveya. She’s in her monstrous form. Teveya has already scouted this area for Keris, while she was working on the drugs. 

“This is the embassy of the Zu Tak,” Teveya says, voice a soft growl. “It is a long hall, build around a garden, and it smells of death. Many people have died here. Their remains still move. There is grave earth on the floors, and many ghosts.”

She recounts to Keris, who puts it together. It seems a small Zu Tak tribe is here, and they have taken some of their ancestors with them - and used the free access to slaves down below to raise the dead and bind their ghosts. They must have been serious about getting control over the Despot, one way or another. Maybe just waiting for him to die so they could trap his ghost. Keris estimates that without more help from that oni, he might have had maybe six months to live.

Hands coated in mercury, Oula carefully removes one of the roof tiles, reshaping it away without a sound.

“Alright,” she murmurs. “We don’t know what we’re going into here, so we stay quiet and unnoticed for as long as possible and see if we can’t learn some starting information by eavesdropping. If we can take the witch alive, we do - I want questions answered - but she’s a witch, and they’re tricky, so if it comes to it we’ll just kill her and eat the loss. I’ll deal with the ghosts so that they don’t take any reports back down to the Underworld. Got it?”

“Do you speak their language, Aunty?” Oula observes in that very obnoxious tone she uses sometimes.

“...” says Keris. “It... _might_ be a dialect of Firetongue I know.”

“Also, it’s the early hours of the morning, and unlike you, both me and the people down here didn’t have a nap in the pool. So they’re probably not too talkative. The ghosts might be, but they’re probably more moaning and wailing and complaining about why they’re dead. Or whatever they do. Ghosts are stupid,” says the demon. “Just kill them all and be done with it, so I can go to bed.”

Keris trades an exasperated look with Teveya. “If we can understand them, we’ll sit and wait for intel for as long as it takes,” she tells her student. “A few hours of waiting in return for some useful dirt on the Zu Tak is a fine trade, and well worth giving up bed for. An assassin should be-”

“Willing to wait days or weeks if necessary to get a clear shot at her target, I _know_ , aunty, Rathan’s told me all about Queen Dulmea’s lessons,” Oula whines. “But _really? Now?_ They’re just a bunch of dumb ghosts and savages, and I’m tired.”

Keris levels a withering look at her that communicates, in no uncertain terms, to suck it up. Flicking Oula on the nose, she slides herself through the hole in the roof and drops silently down into the halls of the cannibal tribe.

Unfortunately - and it is unfortunate to Keris’s slightly irked mind - Oula was right about the language issue. While there are some Tengese-sounding words in the Zu Tak dialect, she can’t really make much out that isn’t people grumbling about the food, the weather, or being stuck up in the sky which isn’t natural. She slinks through the barely lit halls - only the occasional glowing part of the floor from the platform providing light. 

But the interesting thing she does find is in a little temple within the halls. It _reeks_ of blood. Stale blood and fresh blood and rotting blood. It’s a charnel house of polished bone, made - no doubt - from slaves down below.

The necromancer-witch is here. Young, and beautiful in a cold, dead way. Arms red to the below with the blood of a slave she’s been using for auguries, who lies cut open and dead on the table before her.

And it is a Dead way. Because Keris can feel her. Her Sirelmiya-strength. That rotting darkness on the tip of her tongue, wrapped up in a preserved shell of meat. Kept almost fresh by her magic.

((E5, necrotic essence - Keris thinks it’s a weak Greater Dead Nemissary))

“Ffffff-” she breathes, whisper-silent and wide-eyed. “That is not a mortal necromancer. That’s one of the Greater Dead. Puke and plague, how many of those things do they _have?”_

Her fists tighten and she grimaces, nose wrinkling at the smell of the butchered slave. Her teeth bare.

“... alright,” she murmurs to Oula and Teveya. “I’m going to put her down and rip her heart out. Keep the others off me while I fight, okay?”

“We should get out of here so you can cut loose,” Oula whispers back. “I can’t fight that number of ghosts.”

Keris grimaces. A retreat and re-infiltration is a hiccup to her plan, which has already been thrown off by the _fucking nemissary_. And while she’s sure she can take the Greater Dead thing in a woman’s skin, and even do so while being assaulted by dozens of angry lesser ghosts... she might not be able to do it quietly.

“Can you get out the way we came in?” she asks, still quiet. “Without being spotted? Or do you need me to help you back?”

Oula rubs the back of her neck. “I don’t think so,” she admits. “I’ll... just go to my heart. And I’ll head back into you soon, so you can call me out again.”

Keris nods. “Warn Rathan and Haneyl,” she orders her. “Four Greater Dead against the Baisha, and now this. Granted, that was a major raiding party and this is Ca Map, but it still says the Zu Tak have enough Greater Dead to put them on anything important. They should watch for them in the south, and be wary.”

Oula nods, and leans in to kiss Keris on the cheek. “Sorry,” she says, before collapsing into a pillar of mercury that splashes on the floor. It starts to effervesce and melt away, vanishing into thin air.

“Weak,” Teveya growls.

“Before you start saying that,” Keris says. “Can you kill ghosts? Whether they’re immaterial or not?”

“I can tear their heads off. What is death to the Dead?”

“Hmm.” It’s a short, evaluative sound. “Their ghostly forms won’t be a problem for you? You can hit them even when they aren’t solid?”

“I was just going to shed materiality,” the demon says.

Keris nods. “Alright. Keep them off me, then, and make sure they don’t interfere or wake the nemissary. I’ll put her down with poison, help you clear out the rest, then cut her heart out - you’ll be on guard while I carve. We don’t know how many there are here, so if you start to get overwhelmed; warn me.”

“Understood.” Soft. Quiet.

The lights in the hall flicker, and the ghost in the woman’s body mutters to herself, in a language that Keris knows nothing of. It is not Old Realm; it is not even the almost-Tengese of the people outside. But each word is a flickering sound that makes the candles gutter. The guts in the eviscerated slaves squirm like worms.

And then they stop.

The woman turns, glassy eyes gleaming. “I can taste you on the air,” she says softly, vaguely, in rough and thick Old Realm. “Yours is the power of the deeps of the marshes. They warned me.”

Well.

Fuck.

Keris hesitates for a moment, then gives Teveya the signal for ‘hold ready’ and steps out of her hiding place.

“And yours is the power of the Underworld depths,” she replies in the same tongue. “Who warned you? Your ancestors? Your bound slave-ghosts?”

The witch smiles, lips splitting at the sides, too wide. Her neck tilts a little too far. _“They_ did,” she says.

With a shrill ululation, she howls like some creature, hands twisted into claws.

And around her, the bones twitch to life. Or unlife.

Keris lunges for her. Her spear comes out, her hair rushes forward, and toxic vines burst from the ground under the nemissary’s feet; snarling her in place for Keris’s strike. The poisons coating her Lance are agonising, but non-fatal. This monster’s heart will be a good first gift to Ligier in payment for the damage done to the Baisha. She turns pale and savage as she moves; white-haired, slit-eyed, sharp-toothed and bestial. Even as she takes on the terrifying mien of a Pekhijirite Fang, though, Rathan’s light haloes her with innocence and harmlessness. It’s a brutal combination when used against weak minds that can’t handle something being gutwrenchingly terrifying and heartbreakingly vulnerable at the same time.

The dead are rising, bringing the scattered bones to life. But they’re weak, and they’re drowsy and Keris is a knife spinning around as she scythes through the disoriented dead. When she splinters their bones, they hold themselves together - as best they can - but she’s just too fast, too strong. Where she strikes, hungry flowers and vines tear out of dead bone to snag and snare.

And there’s an acidic scent in the air now, overpowering the rot.

With a spin-kick, Keris caves in the skull of a grasping corpse and turns the motion into a leap that ends with her spear through the Dead woman’s throat. She screams - and her back tears out. Something black and awful and with too many legs tears its way out, fleeing back through the wall behind her. Snarling, Keris gives chase. Her Lance shoots forward with bone-breaking force to gouge the wall, and green fire licks out around the cut, beginning to eat away at the Shogunate stone. Too slow! Far too slow for Keris, who smashes into the ember-ridden surface spear-and-shoulder first, bulling her way through on sheer power the same way she did in Malra and scattering green-burning rubble into the room on the other side as she emerges; poison spearhead already flicking out like a snake to strike at the nemissary’s many scuttling legs.

It’s dark outside. Or at least it should be. But behind Keris, the ancient stone of the wall is crumbling, eaten away by the fire of Keris’s hate. Of her envy. Haneyl’s flame licks behind her, casting a halo around her lashing hair.

And her brow with a hollow ring, like a pupil-less eye.

The ghost screams, shedding her rearmost segment in a burst of black blood. Her body is like a millipede, but her face is a crone of a woman. And yet there is a certain kinship to the body she wore. Not just the same face aged - but perhaps a granddaughter. Or a great granddaughter. 

Scuttling and squirming, she crawls up the nearest wall and onto the roof. There’s a fraction of moon shining down - not enough that she’ll suffer in Luna’s whim - and the stars gleam and glisten on her wet, oily carapace. “My slaves will tear your demon apart,” she hisses back at Keris from the roof. “Go on, let them die.”

Keris’s ears prick to the sounds of the conflict within - and snarls again at the realisation that Teveya is hard-pressed against the masses of ghosts. There are even more of them than Keris had thought, and while the killing prowess of the angyal is reaping a deathly slaughter within; sheer numbers are going to turn the tide against her soon.

“Teveya!” she yells, swearing to herself as the nemissary uses the chance to scuttle further away. “Retreat! Back within me, now!”

Then she throws herself after the retreating ghost with a roar.

They’re up on the ancient rooftops now, where sleek black stone arches of the former lords of Creation - and their Dragon-blooded usurpers - still hold sway. From up here, they can see some of the lower reaches of Ca Map below, the sounds of the wretched city drifting up from the lantern-lit boats. Keris is having problems tracking her down - the scuttling sound of her legs echoes wrong.

“So,” the ghost hisses. “Who sent you, servant of the Old Gods? Also come for the old man? They might not know what you are, but I can smell it. Your masters made the old world we claim, and left the dregs to the first people.” She can climb on these surfaces as well as Keris, and could be anywhere in the shadows. Against anyone else, it would be a devastating tactics. But Keris doesn’t need to see her. She first learned to find the immaterial and invisible by _hearing_ it, and her ears are as good as ever. They prick in the darkness, and the ghost’s own words betray her; the pattern of echoes resolving behind closed grey eyes to pinpoint the source.

Which Keris targets with a poisoned spear and a barrage of scything hair and hooks and needles.

The spear takes the ghost in the oozing, wet chest, breaking her carapace. Her many legs are squirming, twitching, pinned down by the blades. Her ancient face is twisted in agony. “Oh crows, eye-eaters, come to me,” she begins, pinned against the lighthouse tower.

Keris feels the gathering power, feels the essence beginning to take Shape, and even if she doesn’t recognise the spell itself, she recognises the intent. She’s trying to escape. Trying to throw herself into a spell and get away.

But Keris knows sorcery too.

“ _ **Break**_ ,” she snarls in Old Realm, and feels the half-formed spell shatter; stifled in its crib. “ _ **Be not**_ ,” she cuts off the nemissary’s attempt at a recovery, squashing her fumbling efforts to reform her dissolving escape route. Keris leans on the spear, keeping the thing pinned - but while she’s busy applying her Lance’s blade to countermagic, she can’t spare the attention to finish the creature off.

Some of the ghost’s substance takes form as crows - but they get not one blade’s length away before they collapse down, sloughing away as they rot quickly. The spectre lets out an agonised wail, clawing weakly at the pinning blades. That chase seems to have taken nearly everything she had.

Then she lets the mask drop, and spits something vile and hissing at Keris. Who slides out of the way and dodges it as easily as she did Kasteen’s poorly-thought attack, made from almost exactly the same situation.

And then, much as she did with Kasteen, she moves in for the kill. There’s no pretence of elegance now; no elegant spearwork, no graceful snakelike motions. It’s just savage, feral violence; stabbing and pinning and gouging and choking and getting her hooks and needles into whatever body parts look soft and tender.

After only a few moments; the ghost is limp and subdued. Panting; Keris stands back, leaving it pinned, and cocks an ear to the lesser ghosts below. The horde is released and howling. Mad monsters on the loose. Some of them are going after the Zu Tak. Others... well. 

“Child,” Dulmea observes, “you know, you did say that the pirate lords of this city are awful. Perhaps you shouldn’t intervene. And such an atrocity of Zu Tak dead going after these lords... well, the decisions of the Despot will be very justified here, no?” She audibly sips her tea. “Perhaps you should simply move this creature off the open space and get to your bloody work.”

Keris’s eyes widen in interest. She takes stock - the Despot and Erda up in his warded tower, Oula gone to Rathan, Teveya back in with Dulmea...

She grins. It’s not a nice expression.

“Mama,” she says lightly, “sometimes you have the _very best_ ideas.”

* * *

The next morning finds Keris in the Despot’s frankly excessive... well, no, Keris can’t actually say that, she’s a little jealous of how lavish they are... apartments, drinking tea with Seresa as she shows off her newest acquisition.

A jet black gem the size of a chicken’s egg, that gleams as if constantly wet.

“Oh, what a gorgeous thing,” Seresa coos over it, feet up on the table as she drinks wine with her breakfast of fish paste and honey. “This has been an enjoyable little trip, hasn’t it? He’s very vigorous.” She leans in towards Keris. “Thirty years of unwanted abstinence does that to a man,” she confides.

Keris shudders delicately. “Even so,” she says. “Well, I suppose it gave him a chance to test out his new muscle. How is he, physically? In,” she adds hastily, “clinical terms, please. I don’t need the intimate details, just the medical ones.”

“Better stamina than you might think. I suppose that’s some blessing from that pet sorceress of his,” Seresa observes. “She’s quite a cute mound of muscle. A fire elemental spirit, chained with that orichalcum binding collar of his.” She shakes her head. “Foolish thing got drunk and then he snapped it on her fifty years ago. His mind is very sharp, too. Well, when he’s not distracted by,” she rests her hand on her chest, almond-shaped eyes crinkling up, “my glorious beauty. And his fingers are very nimble.” 

She smiles. “I think I might be getting a shrine as a night goddess out of this,” she adds. “I’ve wanted a cult for _so_ long.”

“Oh, well done,” Keris compliments. “Very neat. And _my_ activities last night have given him more than enough justification to turn the Zu Tak out and blow them to splinters if they come within range.”

Seresa smiles. “That’s nice,” she says, without asking any questions. “He seemed quite upset when the servants came to fetch him. I wasn’t really listening. I was,” she yawns, “really very sleepy. Of course, they were also surprised to see what he was like, but then again, there are enough old paintings of him that someone got a clue. And of course, the oni still had to obey him.” She shifts to flomp next to Keris, letting Keris’s head rest on her shoulder. It’s oddly not-exactly-like sitting next to Sasi. “You must be exhausted, poor thing. So much hard, boring work.”

“Oh, it was exciting enough,” Keris murmurs, leaning on her. “Won’t argue with the hard, though, even if I’ve fought harder.”

Her lips purse. “Might have to see about that elemental, though,” she adds. “She seem like she wanted that collar off?”

“She’s an oni,” Seresa says with a weary yawn. “They’re usually drunken, violent brutes. Whether they have a divine mantle or not.” She wraps her arm over Keris. “She probably wants the collar off so she can go around attacking people, getting drunk - and if she’s a sorceress too, doing all kinds of awful things with her magic. Sasimana’s handled a few in her time. They’re just a pest. And start fires everywhere.”

Keris snorts. “Well... I’ll keep an eye on her anyway. He’s mine now, so he can’t complain.” She smirks. “How was it? Your first time turning someone to clay in your hands?”

Seresa kisses Keris on the cheek. “I knew coming with you was an excellent idea,” she says happily.

* * *

Keris doesn’t head straight back to Saata. She decides to take a few days to check up on Testolagh and what he’s up to with Calesco and Vali. She is his director, after all, and she wants to see what he’s up to. 

It’s not just that she’s missing her darling - albeit prickly - Calesco.

Testolagh’s island is far south of even Alahi, right at the edge of the world. Auroras are seen every night, and the world has an almost greasy feeling to Keris’s left hand. She can feel the want of the air to be something else, something other than what it is.

But the air around the looming volcanic island where Testolagh has made his home is different. It doesn’t feel chaos-tainted. It feels like Hell. This looming island, with its oversized, cyclopean spires and rough uplands and neat lowland rice fields that look more like the Scavenger Lands than anything Keris has seen down in the Anarchy... feels like Hell.

Testolagh’s fortress is a towering thing of black stone and brass that is built into the caldera. It’s not graceful; it’s brutal and blocky. It makes no attempt to hide what it is. It is a “Fuck You” screamed at the face of the world.

And it has a landing pad in one of the inner courtyards, lined with dragon statues. Keris brings Cissidy down onto it, looking around in a combination of approval and mild horror. On the one hand, it’s a fortress, and just from a glance she can tell that assaulting it would be a nightmare.

On the other hand, concepts like ‘subtle’, ‘discreet’ and ‘under the sightlines’ seem to have been ones Calesco has tragically failed to imprint on Testolagh’s worldview.

“The maps this far south are not reliable,” Dulmea observes, as Keris dismounts from Cissidy, “but I can find no sign of this place. Someone would have noticed such a fertile landscape, surely? And it is basalt and granite here. Surely this is not some transitory isle?”

Keris knocks on the ground twice with her left hand, and shrugs. “Feels real,” she says. “Hellish, but real. But you’re right, this place is... weirdly convenient. And even with the powers of the City, I’m impressed he managed to get this fortress up in a year. I’ll ask him how he found the place.”

A dark figure approaches, sweeping out with a hint of flounce. Calesco is dressed again in the Realm-style robe she seems to be coming to like more and more, closed with her blood-red obi, her figures behind a mist-fine veil. “Oh, hello _mother_ ,” she says. “What are you doing here?” She shifts her attention over to glance at the demons accompanying her - before settling on Seresa.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” says Seresa. And Keris’s hackles rise, as she realises the two women really aren’t dressed too dissimilarly. Seresa’s Realm fire-robe is much lighter, with a green-grey leaf pattern, and it’s open at the neck to bare her cleavage. Her veil is off her face, tying back her hair. But still. “Who are you, cutie?”

“Um,” Keris says, already wincing at the upcoming confrontation. “Seresa, this is my daughter Calesco. Calesco, this is Seresa - one of Sasi’s souls. Her indulgence and her kindness.”

“Charmed,” Calesco says, her tone clearly indicating which one she thinks is dominant. “But yes. What are _you_ doing here?” she demands of Keris. “There’s no need for you to-”

A thunderous boom nearly deafens Keris and blows Seresa’s veil away from her hair entirely. A ballista hits Keris in the chest. “Mum!” Vali says, arms wrapped around her. He’s grown again, and is now her height. Or maybe taller. “What are you doing here, is there a problem, are there bad guys we need to punch, oh oh oh did you see this place, it’s so awesome, did you know Testolagh can make _dragon bones_ I mean they’re made of stone but still...”

“Wai-wha?” Keris wheezes, startled and with half the breath knocked out of her. “Dragon bones? Bad guys? Huh?” She hugs back, but it’s only automatic reflex doing it as she recovers from the dizzying sound and impact.

Vali lifts his mother up, swings her around and puts her down again, slightly too hard. “Come on, let’s get out of the heat,” he says. “I got stuff to show you. And I’ve been punching faeries and monsters and it’s so fun!”

“Vali, do you mind?” Calesco snaps, every inch the older sister. “I’m trying to-”

“Don’t care! Come on, mum, there are even apple trees here because I made him make them and so there’s apples and the people here make cider and he’s missed it and oh, oh,” he leads her into the chiaroscuro halls, where deep dark shadows are cooler than the patches of light, “how are the babies are they all okay?”

“You’ve seen Aiko during Fire,” Keris tells him, not... entirely unthankful for the chance to put off Calesco shouting at her. “The twins are as madcap as ever - they’re getting big, and doubling down on the mischief. Ogin’s worked out phasing his tails through things deliberately, though he can only do one at a time. And Atiya’s much healthier - she had a little cough during Fire, but she got over it just fine. I think her eyesight isn’t so good, so I’ll be making her some glasses.”

Leaning over, she kisses him affectionately on the forehead. “Now, what have you been up to? Show me these apple trees! Calesco, you can come too; tell me what you’ve been reading. Have you been helping fight fae?”

“Yes,” Calesco says, and nothing more.

The story comes out piecemeal from Vali. He has more than a little in common with his cousin when it comes to distracted retelling.

Keris finds it hard to believe at first. But Calesco validates it.

Testolagh made this island. This whole island. It was once a wyldpool, ruled by a wicked sea-witch. Then he went in and killed her and her servants (“We helped too, it was so awesome, I even managed to turn into a dragon!”) and then did _something_ that let him turn the chaos into... this. This island, made from the stuff of Hell - a little slice of the Scavenger Lands on the edge of the world.

“I don’t understand,” Keris says, after cross-questioning has the story hold up. “Was it sorcery? I don’t know of any spell that could... hmm. Well, I guess maybe something that works on similar principles to my world-making spell...” She trails off, lost in thought for a while, then shakes her head. “But he’s never mentioned knowing anything like that! I thought he was just a bare-basics sorcerer - Messenger, summoning, maybe a few other common ones.”

“It was like when we change our land,” Vali contributes. “You know, when I’m like ‘fuck off, Eko, I’m putting a new volcano on the border’, I just do it, you know?”

“... huh,” Keris replies. That sounds more like one of the Maker’s gifts than structured sorcery. “I’ll... have to ask him about that, I guess. Hmm.”

She nods. “Right. Well then, Calesco? Come here, love, let me hug you. How have you been? Oh right, you wanted to know why I’m here - Seresa and I were setting something up for the war against the Zu Tak Dead, and decided to stop by and visit.”

Calesco scowls at her. “I’ve been just fine,” she says. “I’m sure _you’ve_ been enjoying yourself in Hell. Vali said you beat someone up in the arena just to be ‘cool’.” Her tone is acidic.

Keris wobbles her hand. “She was a savage, vicious pirate queen with an ugly temper who challenged me because she didn’t like me pointing out that aimlessly wandering all over the West raiding any port she could find was stupid, and demanded we fight to incapacity because she wanted to spend longer hurting me than first blood would allow,” she expands. “So yeah, I showed off a bit at her expense.”

That just gets her glared at more.

She sighs. “I’m sorry, Calesco. Do you want to come back to Saata?” She’s not going to mention Adelia outright, but she can guess that Calesco is missing her, and that might well be what’s making her snappy. “You deserve a few months off, I’d say. Some downtime spent with your books and your bow.”

“It’s you that’s the problem, not here,” Calesco mutters sulkily.

“You sound upset,” Seresa says, voice gentle. “Do you want a hug?”

“No, I don’t want a hug, you indulgent pile of tar!”

Keris sighs. This may, she’s forced to admit, be a little bit because of some of the things she’s been taking advantage of Calesco’s absence to do. Calesco might not know about them consciously, but she’s born from a part of Keris, and some part of her could well be aware that Keris has been doing things she wouldn’t approve of. It would certainly explain her attitude.

Still, Keris squares her shoulders and keeps trying.

“Well, I’d like it if you came back to Saata for a bit,” she says. “The twins have been missing you, and Kali’s been wanting to show off her new feathers to someone who can appreciate you. Atiya’s doing much better, as well.”

Calesco huffs. “Well, I suppose. But only for the babies. Not for you.”

“Oh... oh, right, Keris.” It’s Testolagh, more tanned than before, and wearing a light shirt and shorts as he walks with some of the people who look like they’re from the same people as him. “When did you get here? And...” he looks at Seresa.

“Seresa. One of Sasimana’s souls,” she says, eyeing him up without any shame.

“Greetings. Is there a reason you’re here, Keris? Has something come up?”

“No. Just en-route back to Saata from Ca Map. I’ve subverted the Despot, and he’ll keep the Zu Tak from heading south while we crush them.”

Keris looks him, and Calesco, in the eye. “This isn’t a war we can put off. There was one of their necromancer-witches there - except she wasn’t a witch. She was a nemissary from the Labyrinth. Another of the Greater Dead - that makes _five_ now, all behind one savage little tribe of ancestor-worshipping cannibals. They have a deathlord backing them; I guarantee it - and they’re expanding. Fast.”

She frowns, looking away. “Annoyingly enough, they’re kind of like... well, me. Powerful backer of the Adamant tier holding what would otherwise be a bunch of warring clans together, a bunch of strong subordinates who are kept on pretty loose leashes, dens and raft-towns and boltholes scattered all over that don’t stay still and haven’t got any firm structure to smash up. Fluid, adaptable, opportunistic and way too good at concentrating force on things that get in their way. If we don’t stop them _soon_ , they’ll grow really, really fast into a threat we can’t easily take.”

Turning back to Testolagh, Keris gestures at him. “Which is why your tasks from me this year are going to be related to the war. I gave you last year to set up, but this year I’m gonna need you to help smash what central powerbases they _do_ have, and if possible to hunt down and kill whatever Underworld horror is pulling their strings. I’m not keen on letting it keep pushing them outward any longer than I have to.”

“Hmm.” Testolagh pauses. “Very well. Any season in particular? At the moment, I’m getting this place set up - and seeing if we can get the Wyld to form sky-rocks like it did up north. And dealing with some angry princes of chaos, of course.”

“Not Air,” Keris reassures him. “I’ll want to do some setup first. Maybe Water for the first strikes - I’ll let you know. And speaking of that, can you tell me more about how you made this place? That sounds like something that’d be useful to know, especially given how much of Shuu Mua is chaos-tainted.”

“Oh, this?” Testolagh shakes his head. “We can talk more over dinner, if you want. It’s a complicated subject. Perhaps we can further that conversation we were having with Sasimana at that new manse of yours.”

Keris realises that he is asking her on a date. And also trying to be subtle. She’s not sure which is scarier.

((lol, burn))

She considers it for a long moment. She wants to know how to carve out reality from the Wyld, of course. But, more than that...

... Sasi _had_ asked them to try. It’s probably why he’s even asking.

“Alright,” she says lightly. “But I’ll cook. I doubt your chefs here live up to Haneyl’s efforts, and I’ve grown too used to being spoiled.”

* * *

That night, Keris crawls out of the hot, sticky bed - Testolagh snoring - and wanders over to the grand sweeping window that overlooks the western side of the island. She leans over the balcony, eating an apple she saved from dinner.

Before they’d headed upstairs for... well, she’s had better. He’s vigorous, certainly, but... he’s no Sasi. No N... no Rat. Yes. No Rat.

Before that happened, he’d talked about how he’d made this place. How it was sort of like sorcery, but... more so. That through will he’d reached into the sea-witches domain after he’d burned her to a crisp, and hammered, _forced_ the substance of chaos into unchanging shape. That he’d made the island and filled it with people - “Proper people, like back home” - and it had taken shape because he had refused to let the chaos be anything else but what he wished.

Flopping over the balcony rail, Keris groans. It’s going to be an utter bitch working out the trick from that. It always is, when she wants to learn something specific. Picking things up naturally is how she’s used to learning the All-Maker’s gifts; letting them grow in her like seeds and discovering them when they bloom. Planting them deliberately... well, she’d managed her Gales, eventually and... with the Silent Wind’s help. And she’d been able to work out Yuula’s medicines mostly on her own. But it gives her a headache every time, and this is less intuitive than most. She’s not even sure if it’s a Malfean gift or something more general.

Urgh.

Sirelmiya ruffles her feathers in her head. “It would be easier if you loved him too,” she suggests gently. “You did not enjoy that. You just lay back and thought of Sasimana and pretended.”

Keris purses her lips. This again.

“I could,” she admits. “It would be easy. I’d just have to want to.”

She pauses, listening to the sounds of the night.

“But... _do_ I want to?” she asks. “Has he... I mean, I love Sasi. I’ve seen Sasi at her strongest and most beautiful and glorious; casting sorcery and out-talking demon princes and spinning cities on her fingers. And I’ve seen her at her weakest and most broken; scared and shaking as everything fell apart around her. She _trusted_ me to see her that weak. That vulnerable.”

Finishing the apple meditatively, she flicks the seeds out with a casual sweep of a hair tendril towards what sound like patches of soil amidst the granite.

“Testolagh... I’ve opened up to him. He’s seen me crippled and crazy when my souls matured. But... okay, he told me his story like I told him mine, after Sasi made us talk. But apart from that, what’s he done to open his heart back?”

She sighs morosely. “Urgh. Ada- ah... _Asarin_ has opened up to me more than Testolagh about that sort of thing.” Keris bites her lip, hoping Sirelmiya didn’t notice the last-second substitution. “I’m just... not sure he deserves it. I’m not sure he’s _earned_ it. Love is important. It shouldn’t be given away lightly.”

The cat-bird-demon in her head simply sighs. “I want to see Sasi happy because the three of you are chained in love,” she says. “But there are so many things you let complicate your life. Love would simplify everything. It always does.”

“Excuse me!” There’s a sound of Dulmea opening a door. “Sirelmiya, what are you doing there? Get away from that mirror! Child, don’t listen to her advice. She knows nothing!”

“I know the ways of love.”

“Quite so, nothing.” Dulmea settles herself down. “Honesty! I leave to give you some privacy and she uses the chance to get in and start giving poor advice!”

“It’s okay, mama,” Keris chuckles fondly. “I think she helped me decide something anyway.” She stretches morosely. “Calesco seems upset. You think she got wind of what I’ve been doing this past year somehow?”

“Perhaps. She is a difficult one, child. You said when she was newborn, she fought against being your child, and sometimes she shows something of that. Knows things she shouldn’t.” There is the sound of Dulmea putting the kettle on. “For my part, in the hundreds of years of my life, I have never seen a need for romance - or sex, for that part. You make such a big deal about it, but it means nothing.”

Keris smiles fondly. “Maybe it’d be easier that way. But...” she shrugs helplessly. “I’m a creature of passion, mama. I wouldn’t give my loves up if I could. It feels wonderful to be head over heels for someone like that.”

“If you say so,” Dulmea says wearily.

* * *

It is cooler up north in Saata. Which is possibly the first time Keris has ever said that.

When she gets back, though, she finds part of the docks are cordoned off and there are red crosses on the doors in areas as separate as Memories of a Golden Land and the places around the university. Back at her mansion, Zanyi is home.

“Keris,” she says, when she enters.  The family is in one of the living rooms in the central annex, waiting for dinner. “The temple’s shut for the moment. There’s been an outbreak of scarlet fever and they’re keeping classes shut until it passes.”

“Yeah,” Zanara agrees. He’s sitting sprawled out on a divan, reading, holding a book in three arms. “Hi mama.”  The curtains are new.  It's probably his fault.  


“Well, it could be worse,” Xasan says. “At least we’re far away from the city here. I bet that’s one of the reason so many pirate lords here live in the mansions. Pretty good deal if you can decamp to the countryside and escape plagues.”

“Scarlet fever?” Seresa asks, frowning.

“Nasty disease,” Keris says, shivering. “There was an outbreak in Nexus when I was thirteen. R- me and my partner, we... well, _I_ wanted to go take advantage. _He_ all but barricaded us both in the squat for a month and made us drink from the safe well four blocks away instead of the one down the street. We were fine, but the Blue Knuckles just over from us all came down with it in the first week. Zizi and Fanger died.”

“Well, how was your business trip?” Xasan asks. “And are you still thinking of sending me and the giantess back out while things are still cooler? A bit cooler, that is.”

“Yeah... Testolagh gave me a few ideas there,” Keris agrees. “I think I might be able to learn how to twist wyld-tainted land into something real. And not just real - designed as I like it, with people and buildings and stuff. A hidden city deep in the mainland somewhere, as a fallback to retreat to if things get dicey.”

She greets her uncle. cousin and brother with hugs – Hany is missing, presumably playing somewhere. “The trip went well,” she answers, getting comfortable in an armchair next to Zanara. “Ca Map’s going to stop the Zu Tak heading south while we smash them - though I found _another_ Greater Dead thing waiting there with a bunch of bound ghosts and probably-nasty plans for the place. Killed it, but it’s not a good sign that they have so many powerful Dead.”

Turning her attention to Zanara, Keris eyes him up and down, confirming something she’d caught on entering the room. “Hello sweetheart,” she says. “Have you... grown, over Calibration?”

“You said you had done some really cool things, but you didn’t say what and then you got distracted with seeing Haneyl and Rathan off and then you heard that rumour at the docks that the Despot of Ca Map was dying and rushed off,” Nara says, feet up. “And _now_ you notice I got bigger?”

“Hany hasn’t forgiven Zana or Nara for suddenly getting so much taller than her,” Zanyi says with a smile.

“You were still looking Two-Opalish when we saw Rathan and Haneyl off,” Keris protests. “I wasn’t sure if you were just adjusting the disguise, or... hmm.” She considers. “Well, I guess it’d make sense. You probably grew in response to what I did over Calibration. So!” She claps. “Who wants to hear an only-slightly-edited story about how I duelled a pirate queen? No names or mission details, but the rest is true; I swear it.” She holds up her hand in a mock oath, and Iris rears off it and blows a little exclamation mark of excitement to back her up.

Zanyi clucks her tongue. “So much fun you’re having without me.” She smiles wickedly. “So when am I going to get to see this place you keep on cryptically hinting at?” She pauses. “Yes, obviously, fun stories too. I am my daughter’s mother, after all.”

Keris purses her lips. “I... _was_ kind of thinking about going in Wood,” she allows. “With Zanara, during their holidays. It should be safer than any other season then - some early arrivals for Calibration show up during Fire, and some hang around after, but Wood’ll have the Conventicle pretty empty.”

She considers it.

“... we’ll see,” is her decision. “But Zanyi; if you do come, you _listen to what I say_ and follow my rules, okay? Hell isn’t a safe place. Xasan can tell you that much. You’ll be safer there with me than anyone else, but still don’t do anything... risky.”

Zanyi smiles.

“Keris, no,” protests Ali. “I don’t want my wife to go to Hell.”

Keris glances at him sympathetically. “Oh, she’s got some convincing to do,” she assures him. “I’m not happy about it either yet. But I’m also not convinced she won’t talk Hermione and Zanara into helping smuggle her into one of my pocket worlds and stow away for the trip when I go if I say ‘no’. For what it’s worth, though, I won’t take her willingly unless she talks you into agreeing.”

“I can’t say I wouldn’t help her,” Nara says helpfully.

Zanyi crosses her arms. “We know how this is going to end, dear,” she tells her husband.

“With you putting that silly idea out of your mind?”

“Think again.”


	6. Chapter 6

_ Cold rain was falling outside. The babbling river was broken by the sound of waveskimmers.  Traces of airjet trails were visible as blue glows below the clouds. With a sigh, Yamal looked away from the sight of the late Air weather.  He was a young man by the standards of the lords of Creation, but he also looked old compared to them.  Few had been chosen in their fifties; few had grey at their temples and the lines of a mortal life lived.  He had rejected the offers to remove them.  They were things he had earned, unlike his ever-young elders.  _

_ The rain was leaving him morose, as it always did. He had turned down the offer of extra snow this year, but right now he was feeling in a snowy mood. _

_ There, in the sky, was the shining silvery shape he had been waiting for. _

_ “Mist,” he said, brushing the marble wall. _

_ “Yes, master,” said a soft male voice that came from everywhere and nowhere. _

_ “The kitchens have been informed?” _

_ “Of course, sir. The staff were notified as soon as he set off, and everything should be waiting.” _

_ Yamal ran his hands through his hair, then irritably flattened it back down again. “I suppose I’ll go meet him at the landing pad.” _

_ “Oh, there’s no need for that, sir,” said his house. “The servants can…” _

_ “Mist, I’m going. My sifu deserves better. And,” he smiled a crooked smile. “It’s only rain. I won’t melt.” _

_ “It is below your dignity to…” _

_ “Mist, I don’t have dignity, especially not in front of my sifu.” He turned, grabbing a coat from the rack, and headed out. _

_ Outside, the cherries were blossoming. They always blossomed, year in and year out in his mansion beside the Yanaze. They were there to look beautiful, not serve fruit – there were greenhouses for that. He took a deep breath, smelling rain and the floral scent, and settled himself. He was worried, yes, but not about his old master’s arrival. No, there were other reasons for his concern.  _

_ The carefully-laid path of honey-coloured stone remained dry, the rain skittering off it, as the silver hawk up above circled, its pilot adjusting for the landing. Then, like the bird it resembled, it swooped in, latching onto the nesting-point. The ground crew hastily secured it, hooking it up to the charging conduits even as the chest opened and the lightbridge descended. _

_ Yamal knelt. “Sifu,” he said, lowering his head. _

_ Reaching out, a lined pair of hands tilted his head back up. He met ivy-green eyes that sparkled, not just with the light of the stars but also with amusement. “Yamal, my boy, you’re ruining your robe.” _

_ “Sifu Kejak,” he protested, “it means nothing.” _

_ “Nothing save the extra effort of your staff. Consider this always; your mark of humility might be a sign of conspicuous consumption. Always consider the consequences of your actions; never cease at just the first order ramifications.” _

_ “Yes, sifu,” he said, ashamed. _

_ And then the old man’s eyes – so old, as old as the Age, they said – creased up. “But I appreciate the thought. Let’s get out of the rain, mmm?” _

_ “Of course. There should be spiced wine and those little cakes you liked so much waiting for you.” _

_ Kejak grinned at that. “Trying to butter me up?” _

_ “Merely showing respect for my master.” _

_ “Boy, you are transparent. You might be able to bend the truth, but when you’re caught out by such things, it shows.” _

_ “Always ready with a lesson, aren't you?” _

_ “That is why I am the master, boy.” _

_ The two men headed inside. _

* * *

Keris wakes, blinking, the morning sun creeping in through the windows. Ogin is asleep on the pillow beside her head, his thumb in his mouth, Iris tangled up in his tails. Kali is lying there next to her in kitten form, legs wagging in the air as she chases unseen things. And from the cot, she can hear the sound of Atiya grousing.

“... mama?” she questions. “Did you, uh...”

She pauses. Dulmea can’t usually see her dreams - or at least not the ones that are actual dreams, rather than her meditating her way into her domain. Still, that... it’s been a while since she had a flash of Yamal so strong.

And that star-chosen; his sifu...

She shivers, and puts it out of her mind. Yamal lived two thousand years ago, and died in an usurpation that wiped out almost his entire world. Getting intimidated by ghosts of the past is pointless, especially when she has work to do.

“What is it, Keris?” Dulmea asks, as she pulls herself out of bed to check on Atiya. Her little girl is wet.

“... nothing,” Keris says, changing Atiya with practised motions. “Just... an odd dream. Old dream.” She shivers again, and focuses on her daughter. “Hey there, little princess,” she croons. “There now, good girl. Isn’t that better?”

Atiya squints up at her in the dawn light, her narrow dark eyes not revealing anything. She doesn’t smile when she gets changed. She’s not like Kali there, who treats it with the same delirious delight she seems to take from most kinds of personal attention.

“Mmmam,” she burbles. She’s slow to talk, but at least she’s getting some words now.

“That’s right, darling,” Keris murmurs to her. “Mama! Mama is here! Mama loves you very much, doesn’t she?” She kisses Atiya’s nose, and carefully puts on the silver-framed glasses with their little strap; the lenses commissions from a glassworking temple.

“See?” she teases gently, and starts getting Atiya redressed and ready for the day. The twins, she leaves sleeping for the moment. Not only will Ogin get all grumpy if he wakes up too early, but any peaceful quiet time before Kali-in-the-mornings is to be treasured.

Atiya remains a strange little girl. Not strange by the standards of the twins - except maybe she is. She doesn’t smile when people smile at her. She’s not very ‘touchy’ when her two siblings love to be held. She never gives any of the effusive displays of affection that Kali and Ogin are prone to.

But least Keris can leave her sitting up and only worry about her falling over, rather than - as her siblings were at the same age - running off and finding something high to jump off or otherwise bring their mother stress and alarm.

She does like it when people sing to her, and that’s what Keris does now; plucking a high melody to match her essence-song from the strands of Time as they savour the morning. She gets Atiya dressed in an embroidered tunic and gives her a knitted snake toy that’s currently her favourite. As ever, Atiya grips it tightly for a while, then starts pulling it back and forth along the floor with grave solemnity.

She’s going to need to think more about how to raise Atiya. Kali and Ogin are Cinnamon’s children; they’re weird, god-blooded babes whose mother is a courtesan and entertainer who is more than a little scandalous. But Atiya has social expectations as befits the daughter of the woman who is now the figurehead of the Hui Cha. A role Keris is cheating her way through, when she really isn’t a proper Tengese lady - or even a proper triad princess.

“What am I going to do with you, hmm?” she wonders, watching Atiya mime her toy serpent striking at random spots of floor. “You’re going to be a princess someday, and I don’t know how to teach you to be one of them.”

She sighs. “Well, I suppose I’ve got a bit of time before you’re ready to start having lessons,” she admits. “Still. I hope you’ll turn out to like learning things, my darling girl. You’ve got a lot you’ll need to know.”

Atiya gums her finger, and her thoughts are interrupted by a squeaky yawn and a “Mama?”

Kali has woken up.

Then there is a thud.

Kali has fallen out of bed.

“Good morning, little feather,” Keris sighs, turning and reaching out with a hair tendril to lift her daughter back up. “Come on, up you get. Back on the bouncy bed.”

“Mama, mama, mama, I saw a big big big rat and I chased it and I ate it and it lost and I’m the best!” Kali says wisely.  Her red hair is sticking up; one particularly prominent loop nearly dips in front of her eyes.  She doesn't care she just fell out of bed.  She never does.  


“Well _done_ , baby girl! What did you chase it as?” Keris asks. “Were you kitty Kali?”

Kali considers this. “Sometimes!” she says brightly. “And ‘Gin was there!”

“Oh was he?” Keris asks, turning to the curled-up silvery form still on the bed. “Did you help your sister, moonbeam?” No answer is forthcoming; Ogin is still asleep, cuddled up to Iris. 

“Gin! Gin! Tell mama how you helped me fight the boss rat!” Kali insists, crawling up to him to butt him with her head. Keris gives Atiya one more forehead kiss - and is bitten on the chin by a toy snake for her trouble - before going over to sit on the bed. She scoops Kali into her lap, and gives her a cuddle.

“I bet all the other rats will be scared of you now that you’ve shown you can beat them so well,” she grins. “Be sure not to get all smug about it, okay? Just a _little_ smug.”

“Uh huh!”

Of course, that isn’t the end of Keris’s morning. Kali insists on checking on Hany and Aiko to make sure that the rat didn’t get them because they were there in her dream, they were, mama, and then everyone else is starting to stir and... Keris yawns. She could honestly do with a nap already.

But she’s not getting one. Because she has a summons this afternoon to speak with Sinasana Medala.

* * *

The Anubalim, the ancient district where the Sinasana hold court, is built of a hundred styles all running together. Newly built pagodas and ancient crystal towers twine around one another, while the sound of the many temples chime out. A cadet house shouldn’t have so many temples to little gods, but the lords of this city know to give thanks for their domain - and the Blessed Isle is a long, long way away.

Little River arrives with an sizable escort of men of the Hui Cha - and several women, too. They’re putting on a united front as they pass the hawkers and the flocks of bureaucrats and money-counters and spies between the towers.

“I fear we’ve taken too long and we’re pushing the patience of these Realm-dogs,” Pale Branch says beside her, eyes narrowed. “We should have taken the lands as blood money faster, but now the Sinasana have lost their patience - and they do buy much rice from them.”

“It couldn’t be helped,” Little River replies in an undertone. She’s in black again - this time an ao dai cut with ocean turquoise, and offset with an embroidered sash. “Hurricane season slowed us down in our efforts to take the fight to them. We’ll have to live with the consequences, and ensure they don’t impact us for the worse.”

“I hope so,” Pale Branch says. Little River notices her subconsciously rub the cursed demon tattoo that grants her her hidden powers. “I... well, you’re going to be doing the talking anyway. Sinasana Medala scares me.”

Little River gives a serious nod. “Yes,” she murmurs, not making it clear which part she’s agreeing to.

She is taken into the endless, winding palace - and the men are made to wait outside while the ladies can follow. They’re lead up into an inner courtyard - no, a fighting pit. The walls here are carved marble, decorated in intricate geometrical patterns that bring to mind waves and flames. Parakeets nest up in the rafters.

Sinasana Medala waits for them up top, looking down on the ladies from the spectacle box. She leans forwards, a savage smile on her lips. “Hello, ladies,” she says bluntly. The sunlight catches her jade arm. “So nice of you to accept my invitation.”

“It was our pleasure,” Little River replies, bowing stiffly not one inch more or less than is proper to the ruling satrap. “Our thanks for your hospitality.”

“I don’t have time for your silly Tengese games and veiled insinuations,” Medala says. “I’m sure we have places we both want to be. But you’ve had enough fun with your war against the Hinya. Sink their ships; I don’t care. Murder some of their agents and relatives and friends in a way that lets there be some doubt that you were behind it - no, don’t lie to me, Little River, I know your lot were behind it. Again, that’s fine, as long as you keep the murders to a dull roar. Sack some of their lands and raid their holdings away from here - so what?

“But your blockade ends now. Saata cares about the rice from the Hinya lands. I care about it. Maintain the blockade, and we will break your fleet to ensure the trading route is kept open.” She brings her jade arm down on the counter in front of her, making a sound like a gong.  Her brows furrow. “The early-Water harvest is coming here, and you Hui Cha will sit down, shut up, and keep out of my way.”

“And if we supply food through another route?” Little River replies. “The Hinya started this war, lady satrap. We have not yet had vengeance for their attack against us. If food is your concern, we will find a way to provide - and if we do, as you say, you will have no reason to care.”

“Why should I make such a concession?” The old woman squares her shoulders.  There is something very, very dangerous in her eyes, warning the woman not to push her luck. “Little River, I told you; you play by my rules, or I break you. Why should I let you play games that risk the flow of my rice?”

“The Hinya are a disorderly rabble,” Little River argues, not backing down. “With their lands under Hui Cha management, the rice they provide will come in better time, without being interrupted every other year by slave revolts or Raraan Ge infighting. As you say; the early-Water harvest is soon. Give us a measure of time to provide another source of food for Saata. We will provide, and the city will not be threatened. If we fail to offer one before the harvest... well. We will not fail, so the point is moot.”

There is an unpleasant smile from Medala. “Are you vowing that the Hui Cha will fund all and any actions I have to take to make sure my city is fed?” she asks, leaning forwards.

Keris can hear the intake of breath from the - rich - Hui Cha women around her. Her lips thin, and her mind races. What are her options here? She can agree, at massive cost to the triads. She can back down, and weaken her position. She can probably argue a short grace period to end the war before the harvest, but that’s no sure thing. She can refuse, take the Sinasana fleet on head-to-head... but winning that fight would mean playing enough of her hand that she’d lose anyway.

What else, what else? She doesn’t look away from Medala’s cruel smile as she dredges her mind for any alternatives. Little River has her position to think of here. If she cowers, if she submits, then a lot of the work she’s done will have been for nothing.

“A blockade cannot be easily dismantled,” she says slowly. “And we still have a month or more before Water. If I vow to have finished our war before the turn of the season, and that the blockade will be gone by the time the rice is shipped across to Saata - will that be satisfactory?”

It’s backing down, to an extent. Even if she’s not saying it out loud, it’s still a retreat. But it’s also an advance - a claim that she can win in the short time she has left. Or if not win, then at least take a few bold young Hui Cha men across and claim the head of someone important among the Hinya - or perhaps several heads. That will satisfy those clamouring for blood in the triads, and she’ll be able to swing them to more subtle means of vengeance and hidden war with their initial fury sated.

The old woman laughs, with a bark. “Brash. You have until the end of the season, little girl. And if you aren’t out of the way, my fleet will smash yours to splinters and we'll see how your Hui Cha fare without the ships to protect your trade routes.”

Beneath the placid mask of Little River, Keris’s lips purse. But she doesn’t disagree. Only bows acknowledgement of the ultimatum.

The women leave. There is rumbling. Not in the words, but in the way they walk. In their posture. Little River took arrogant, young women with her - the next generation, the ones who have gained power in her quiet coup.

They don’t like the way they were talked to. And they don’t like the idea of losing their new power.

“Pale Branch,” Little River says as they get clear of earshot. She pitches her voice low enough not to carry - but loud enough that the whole group will hear it. “Would you help me assemble a list of brave young men willing to risk a dangerous mission into Hinya territory? I think we have been focusing too much on matching the breadth of their forces - instead of sending a small force in to take the heads of their more valued members.”

Pale Branch examines her nails. “A few brave - and very dashing - young men, perhaps with something to prove, led by one with blood of the dragons?” she enquires, pitching her voice just so. “I do believe my sister’s son is eager to gain renown. I’m sure he would be champing at the bit for something like that.  Especially since I know that the Hinya have no dragon blood among their living members.”

And that changes the tone of the conversation. Little River gets more than a few names from that, as the women consider male relatives - and a few “it would be a shame if he died on such a raid” volunteers - for this.

Little River smiles. “Well then, ladies,” she says. “Let us go talk to the men about the next step in our war. And once the blockade is down, and we no longer need maintain it...”

Her smile is every bit as nasty as Medala’s was.

“I’m sure we can find other ways to hurt the Hinya. Don’t you?”

* * *

The wheels of conspiracy start to move in the background.  Keris leaves Pale Branch to handle finding her some men who will remember who gave them this chance to claim glory.  In the meantime, she has her own more sinister affairs to advance.

The hidden room in Hui Cha Peacock Golden Child’s townhouse is something that would get her drowned if the Immaculate Order knew about it. Her, and likely many of her associates as the monks sought how far the corruption has spread. Because in the eyes of the knowing, the ‘divine’ artwork therein has the touch of Hell to it, and the lurid icons and wicked altar are devoted to darker powers.

Keris has been working on her. Her prayers have a more of the truth in them, these days. She has added to Golden Child’s tattoos, reworking them for little blessings. And now in this hidden shrine, Golden Child kneels, cleansed and purified, as Cinnamon pierces her flesh in ways she learned from Lilunu’s book.

“Tell me how you feel,” she murmurs, stroking the taller woman’s shoulder comfortingly. It’s quite the picture - Cinnamon; petite and slender and upright, and her bigger, stockier, more muscular lover.

Both of them know who has the power in this room, though. Golden Child’s associates are still unaware of the true meanings of the artwork she worships, but the woman herself? She knows the true nature of Nululi. She knows the loyalties of the woman who has her on her knees. She knows what House Sinasana would do if they knew of this.

She just doesn’t care.

“Do you sense it?” Cinnamon prompts. “Your essence beginning to flow; the opening of your third eye?” She’s working on the navel chakra at the moment; the root and sacral piercings already done. “Tell me what it feels like.”

Golden Child inhales, breath shuddery, pupils dilates. “Yes, yes,” she gasps. Her brow is sweaty, her pupils dilated. As Cinnamon told her, there is no beauty without pain. “It tingles inside. It is like I have pins and needles in my blood. But,” she inhales. “I can endure.”

“Good,” says Cinnamon. “That’s good, darling. Focus on that feeling. Try to see through it, past it. You can only see inward at the moment - but even then, you should be able to sense your own essence moving, and the patterns it begins to form.”

She moves up, swabbing between Golden Child’s breasts for the site of the heart chakra piercing. This needle is cobalt-tipped, and the piercing a tiny twelve-faceted green opal.

She gives no warning, to prevent a ruinous flinch. It’s quick, and then done; a few beads of blood escaping. Four down. Three to go.

Her work continues.

Cinnamon knows the point when she is done. It’s when her left hand feels the _rush_ of hellish power through Golden Child’s body, as the piercings - each one containing a little hellish material made by that same hand - arc together. They blast through her chakras like a storm surge through a canal; flooding fields, breaking open dams and locks, undoing the limits put on man by the lords of Hell.

The older woman’s back arches and she screams. Then she sags down, limp as a boiled noodle.

Her heavy-lidded eyes flutter open. She sees Cinnamon - really sees her - and she shrinks back. “You...” she breathes. “You’re... so hot. So... bright...”

Keris smirks. “So you’ve said before, darling,” she teases. “But I’m always glad to be complimented.”

Golden Child’s eyes remain wide, though, and Keris... well, she can’t really empathise staring at the gulf between them from the other side. By the time she could taste the potency of a being’s essence, she was already as strong as a demon lord.

But she remembers how Jacinct’s inner might had scared her, on her first arrival in Hell. And she remembers the terrible, impossible universe of blood within the Silent Wind. So she can imagine what Golden Child is feeling now.

“I am my lady’s priestess,” she says gently, stroking Golden Child’s cheek. “You knew this of me already, and I am as I always have been. All that has changed is that you know it more... intimately, now.”

The other woman lifts her trembling hands. “What did you do?” she wonders. “Why do I feel so... alive?”

“I woke your essence,” Keris says simply. “Broke the limits the gods set on mortal men. You can see the world as it truly is, now. And act on it.”

She pauses for a moment, and smiles kindly. “Perhaps this will help.” Sauntering over to her discarded clothes, she lifts the gold-and-adamant collar from them, and clips it around her neck. Golden Child visibly sags as a pressure so overwhelming and omnipresent she hadn’t been able to consciously distinguish its edges suddenly abates.

Golden Child balls her hands, flexing them. “You said I wouldn’t have to sacrifice to our masters just to regain power?” she checks. “That they would favour me and I need only rest?” She takes a deep breath. “And that your familiars would teach me more of the demon arts?”

“Yes,” Cinnamon breathes. “Your power is unlocked in truth now. It’s yours, not merely borrowed strength. Feel the power course through you. This is what the gods denied us out of fear and avarice.”

She throws a quick glance past Golden Child, at a shadowy corner of the room where one of the shrines is built, and makes a subtle beckoning motion with her chin.

“And as for learning more...” she drawls.

A pool of shadow deepens, darkens, and out of it flows a female figure. She has the features of a Tengese woman, but her skin is as dark as midnight and her hair is the deep blue of dusk. She smells of flowers and wine and almost sickly-sweet fruit. “Before, little Cinnamon has only shown you the weaker demons - lesser beings,” she says gently, as she approaches Golden Child from behind, wrapping her up in a warm bug. “But I am not like them. Golden Child, I am a demon lord - a mighty figure in Hell, here to be your ally as one of my favourite servants.” She pauses. “And you’re adorable,” she adds, in a purr. “Cinnamon has done such a good job with you. You look so beautiful.” Her hands go to the other woman’s back. “And those muscles are just scrumptious. You’re beautiful, darling.”

“This is Lady Seresa,” Cinnamon introduces. “A close friend and ally of mine.”

“Worship me, adore me, and I will grant you power - and my favour,” Seresa says. “Hell is generous indeed. I am generous.” Her tongue - longer than human - licks her lips. “I can taste your wants,” she breathes. “They’ll all listen to you, when you learn to speak with my sweet words.”

“So the question is,” breathes Cinnamon in Golden Child’s ear, her fingers tracing up her spine and circling delicately around the still-tender piercings there, “what would you like lessons in _first?”_

* * *

Later, Cinnamon pours herself another cup of tea and considers where to go with Golden Child. The woman herself is now a fully-fledged Yozi cultist - well, _Lilunu cultist_ \- and she’s a woman of some importance in the Hui Cha. She has friends. Allies. 

Perhaps it might be useful to have a rival cult which owes nothing to the Lintha-influenced Charitable Peach. Or perhaps she could try to fuse the efforts. Though it might be risky to expand. Ah, things to think of, she thinks, wrapping her thin silk dressing robe more tightly around herself.

She can hear Seresa’s ‘instruction’ from here, even on the other side of the house. But only because she knows it’s there - and the sharpness of her hearing. The demon magic of the shrine she set up here safeguards the secrets of this townhouse.

Chewing on a lock of hair a little harder than necessary, she tries to put it out of her mind. It’s not that she’s uncomfortable with how well she’s fitting into the stereotype of the Yozi-cultist dancer-courtesan from Elanora’s Fall, she’s just...

... well, okay, maybe she _is_ a little uncomfortable with it. And maybe she’s also not... _entirely_ at her ease with using Seresa like this. It’s certainly convenient to be able to throw a seductive demon lord at any seducible problem, and both Seresa and Sasi would tell her to do it, but...

Wrinkling her nose, Keris Maryam Dulmeadokht spits her hair out and tries to concentrate on her tea.

“My queen.” It’s Firisutu, and Keris sinks into meditation with some relief, arriving in the shining temple-mountain of salvage and ore that is the palace of the Golden Ape. He is waiting for her, standing on a gantry that overlooks great vats where they are boiling down discarded szirom newspapers into wood pulp. The whole arrangement steams in the rains of the Spires. “How goes it with you?”

“Well, I think,” she replies. “I bought enough time from Medala that my Hui Cha will get their vengeance, and Golden Child is happy. How goes it with you, firstborn?”

He makes a calm gesture with his hands. “The lands are starting to get more used to the keruby and their adult forms. They grow in number, and while there are many more children, I have noticed that fewer child keruby seem to be forming spontaneously. Perhaps it is just the absence of the monarchs, but it is something I intend to look into.” He pauses. “But it is on the subject of Golden Child I wish to speak.” 

He shifts, the cunning and intricate metal pieces of his body clicking like clockwork as he moves.

“She is more than just one of your Hui Cha pawns now. Yes?”

“Yes,” Keris admits. “I like her. She’s tough and sweet and weirdly shy. And she knows about me now. Or at least, she’s past the first fence.”

Firisutu sighs, thoughtfully. “She must be led, too. Led and guided. She is not something to throw away or sacrifice; she is something to invest in.”

“I’ve awoken her essence,” Keris points out. “She can see the world as it truly is now, and start to grow in power.”

“To teach her of the Yozis, to make yourself vulnerable to her as she knows about your demonic power - that is what made her truly yours. But,” the golden ape says, “it does not stop there.”

Grey eyes flicker over him cautiously. “You think I should tell her about what I truly am?” she asks. “About my souls?”

“Perhaps in time. But that is not what I meant. If you are to build a cult, it must be something you plan to safeguard. Something that can run stably when you are not here. And,” Firisutu warns, “remember Triumphant Air. You are not Ligier. You should be sure that you can evacuate your cultists - and that they have ways to get out themselves, if the Immaculates come for them.”

Keris considers that, and nods. “I remember,” she muses. “I need ways they can either lie to a magistrate and be believed, or never be questioned by one in the first place.”

“Indeed,” the ape agrees. “It would not do for Golden Child’s sisters to fake some crime that gets her investigated, and for the ruinous truth to come out.”

Keris scowls. “Damn right,” she mutters. “Hmm. A Malran gambit, then? Some way of them hiding the truth even from themselves?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps.”

“Hmm.” Keris purses her lips thoughtfully, and nods. “I’ll consider how it might be done. In the meantime... show me around?” She smiles fondly. “I haven’t seen much of your mountain on previous trips, and it looks worth showing off.”

Firisutu’s place is clearly of the Spires, but there’s something of the Ruin’s ramshackle nature about it too. Here they take what is not wanted, and grant it new forms and new purpose. Wood pulp steams away in cauldron lakes and rotten food is burned to drive mechanisms that pump molten metal. There is constant activity here; an endless stream of refuse always flowing in from the rest of her soul – and most of what is remade here heads straight to the City. 

She watches as Firisutu chats to a foreman about the candles they’re making from melted down stubs, and a memory comes to mind. Her and Rat, scrimping and saving, desperately trying to find new use for things they found on the street. Old rope unwoven and used to stitch up clothing. Stolen sheets becoming a hammock. All Rat’s clever little traps - half of which never worked.

Yeah. There’s a lot of Nexus in this place too. It’s actually not unlike what Eko casts the Ruin as, Keris thinks - but doesn’t say. This place is an engine that keeps her inner world moving; a driving force that burns the old to make the new and stops things from slowing down and locking up and becoming stagnant. At the end of the tour, Firisutu nods to her. “My queen, we have come a long way, have we not?” The little hair-wrapped monkey skull at the top of the great contraption that is his body looks down at her.

“We have,” she agrees warmly, reaching up on tiptoe - and then on hair-tendrils - to caress the electrum bars of his head-cage. “So far now from what we used to be.”

“That just means we know how far we can go,” he observes. “And how far we are yet to go. We cannot see the end path, yes.”

“But we’ll walk it until we get there,” Keris finishes, and gives him a hug.

When Keris opens her eyes, her tea is cold and the rains have come. At least things have fallen quiet in the bedroom, with just the sound of talking. Keris creeps in to check that Golden Child is fairing alright. After all, Keris did just blast open her chakras with hellish power.

The two women are in the lavish bedroom, upon a silk-draped bed. Golden Child is wrapped up in Seresa’s arms, head buried in her chest, and Seresa is holding her. Not romantically, but comfortingly. From the glimpses of her face, she’s been crying.

“... and, I don’t know, she was a hard woman. Stern. Didn’t like anyone arguing back. But... she was still my mother,” Golden Child snivels. “And she... she just died. Poisoned. I never got to even ask her... ask her....”

“There, there,” Seresa whispers, holding her tight. “Let go of the pain.”

Keris goes very still for a moment, then squeezes her eyes shut in pain, shrinking in on herself. Silently, and without alerting either woman, she retreats to another bedroom, and wraps herself around a pillow.

She really wishes she had her babies there to cuddle. Guilt isn’t a comfortable feeling.

* * *

Perhaps that’s the reason she takes a few days off from Hui Cha affairs. That and having to sit through a very, very boring and tedious argument between Jade Fox and Lucky Wolf about trading route rights, which she finally settled by getting Jade Fox to make a small concession that _had_ to be worth less than her time.

“It’s like dealing with _children_ ,” she tells Aiko, frowning as she flicks her hair. “Men!”

“Men!” Aiko agrees, crossing her arms and nodding like she knows what Keris is talking about.  Her thick brows furrow, and she copies Keris's hair flick.  


They’re in Keris’s private sorcery room at Silver Lotus. It’s one of the hidden rooms she’s built into the structure during the renovations. Ones which don’t have ordinary doors. There’s her special bathroom, which is an indulgence that Firisutu whined at her about. There’s one room that she’s really looking forwards to showing Sasi. And there’s this room, which has all the tools of an alchemist and demonologist, and thus is approximately as illegal as the shrine in Golden Child’s house.

With tweezers, she takes one of Aiko’s hairs, and adds it to vitriol. Then - with promise of candied fruit - she also takes some of the girl’s blood and adds it to a hot brass plate. Aiko snivels a bit at that, but tries to be brave.

Placing an apple seed on the hot brass plate, Keris carefully drops the vitriol onto it. There’s a whoomph of green flame which rises up to the ceiling, with a smoky black halo around it. What’s left growing from the brass is a tiny sculpture of an apple bonsai tree, made from brass.

Hmm. Keris taps her fore teeth with a lock of hair. If she’s interpreting things right, Aiko is going to get bigger. A lot bigger. And that might be a problem. She already weighs as much as a girl twice her age.

“There now,” she says with artificial cheer. _“Good_ girl. And now the hurty part is over and you get your sweets. Come on!”

Leading her over to the comfy chair where Keris occasionally takes naps during long projects, she gets Aiko settled in her lap and happily cramming candied grapes into her mouth. Only once the little girl can’t see her expression does Keris let herself frown.

This could be a problem.

‘An artifact?’ she muses inwardly. ‘Something to drop her weight? Blue jade might be able to do that... or some kind of flight thing, maybe. I’d try studying how I’m weightless when running, but that’s too linked to motion; it’d do nothing for her when she’s still.’ There’s always the possibility of something sorcerous, too. And there might be magics that could transform her into having the body of a mortal girl, or stunt the growth of her dragon side, or... gods, a thousand other things. Or...

There is a knock on the hidden door that Keris knows _damn well_ that no one else should be able to find. She put a lot of work into this! There are all kinds of research materials in here - fragments of stolen sorcerous lore from Malra, demonic codices from Orabilis, even her precious book from Lilunu. Her head snaps around to the door and her ears prick towards whoever’s on the other side as she quickly lifts Aiko up off her lap and settles her back into the chair; a finger on her lips. Her hair silently draws Ascending Air in two long tendrils, and her fingers twitch around the potential-shape of her Lance.

It sounds like... oh.

Zanyi. And Keris frowns, as she realises she has Ogin in her arms. The blades vanish. After a moment’s hesitation, she hastens over and opens the door.

“How...” she starts, then looks at Ogin. “Really, moonbeam? You found mama’s secret room all by yourself?”

Ogin smiles shyly at that, squirming in his aunt’s arms until he’s more comfortable. “I found mama in hide & seek,” he tells her.

She grins. “You did, at that. I didn’t know we were playing, though. Did Aunty Zanyi start the game?”

“Well, I was a little curious where you were hiding yourself away,” Zanyi says with a smile remarkably like Ogin’s. The gossip-witch is looking around the place, and Keris... kind of doesn’t want that. There are things too sensitive for her in here. Also, rather too many explicit sketches of Sasi she’s doodled when bored - and oh dragons and gods, some of Ney that... that... might be on some of the surfaces right now and thus she really _mustn’t_ let her look around.

“Mama likes hide & seek,” Ogin observes.

“That she does.” Zanyi looks more serious. “But it’s not just that. A message just arrived from Pale Branch. It was addressed to you, but... well, I mean, you weren’t there.” She’s remarkably unashamed about reading it.

Keris pinches the bridge of her nose. “Alright, fine. I was about done here anyway. Aiko, sweetie, come on!” Hair limbs move and grab and push, hustling them all - especially Zanyi - out of her secret room and locking the door behind them.

“So,” she says breezily, leading them to a sitting room nearby without releasing her grip on her cousin’s arm. “What was in the private message from Pale Branch that was meant for my eyes only?”

Zanyi’s complete lack of shame continues. And she’s not light hearted. “She wants Little River right now,” she says. “That’s why I had Ogin find you. Her twins have both come down with scarlet fever.”

“Fuck,” Keris swears immediately, not even caring that it's in front of Aiko. “Okay. Good call. I’ll go right away.” She grimaces. “And I should see about brewing up some wider-scale treatment to be distributed, too. This epidemic needs to be cut off before it gets any worse.”

Keris skims the note as she grabs her things - the twins are in Strong Ox mansion in the countryside, which makes matters worse. Shit. It’s probably some maid heading home for a holiday, and catching it before she heads back to work. From what Keris remembers, it’s spread by air and affects young children the worst.

It doesn’t take her long to get there, and Pale Branch leaps to her feet immediately when she’s shown in. Her friend looks like she’s aged a decade in a few days. “Gods, you must have whipped your horse to death getting here this quickly,” she exclaims.

“For your children, I could hardly do less,” Little River replies with a grim smile. “Greetings can come later; where are they?”

The twins are in their white-walled nursery; red faced, and naked which shows the red rash. An old woman has a soft-haired brush and water - she dips the brush in the herb-scented water, and brushes them whenever they look dry. To bring down the temperature, Little River assumes. Pale River sounds worse off - she’s coughing, and her cries are quiet. It must hurt her to swallow, because she’s dribbling.

“Poor darlings,” murmurs Little River, already making plans not to let Atiya out of Silver Lotus _at all_ until this epidemic is well and truly gone. “Alright, give them here. Pale River first. This will take a while.”

Her pack of needles is in her hip pouch - her hair in this form can’t hold it, which is horribly unfair - and she can eat the illness out of the babies’ veins as long as she’s not observed. The hard part won’t be treating them so much as doing it subtly.

“Give me some privacy,” Little River adds over her shoulder as she gently picks Pale River up. “This will be easier if there’s nobody to distract me while I work.”

“You can treat it?” Pale Branch says, biting her lip. “I... I lost a brother to this. When I was a child.”

The water dragon nods grimly. “And I lost friends, in my own childhood. I was motivated to learn, when I began studying medicine. Once your twins are healthy, I’ll see if I can produce treatments on a wider scale that we can supply to the Memory of a Golden Land, if not more of Saata.” She flashes a quick, mirthless smile. “If nothing else, it wouldn’t hurt our standing with the lady satrap to put paid to a plague on her doorstep. But for now...”

She draws Pale River into her lap and traces fingers over her reddened skin, mapping out her chakra meridians and planning out the first needles - though she refrains from applying them until the little girl’s frantic mother is out of the room. After some hovering, Pale Branch leaves Little River alone with the very sick little baby. Her pale green eyes are bloodshot, and when she checks the back of her throat it’s inflamed and weeping a discharge.

Placing her needles carefully, Little River seeks to strengthen the good health of the little girl, bringing her temperature under control and coaxing her body to handle the disease properly. It’s not so much the direct contagion alone that’s so terrifying; it’s everything associated with it. Blindness, simple-mindedness, crippling; all things Keris had seen on the streets of Nexus.

She sighs. All she can do now is hope the little girl is strong enough to fight it off.

Nudging the door open, she hands Pale River - who is thankfully looking slightly better - over to her mother, and takes the little girl’s brother back in as Pale Branch fusses. He, at least, is looking slightly better, and Keris again sinks questing root-tendrils into his flesh to clear up the worst of the symptoms as she begins to pierce his skin with slender pins.

Eventually, the work is done, and Pale Branch and her sit down with a bottle of wine. It’s a little early in the day for that, but her friend clearly needs a stiff drink. Little River is explaining that they’re treated and they’re probably going to recover, but they need to keep their temperatures down and to contact her if they get worse again.

“Pale Mistress’s curses,” Pale Branch mutters. “Why has she brought her mischief to Saata?”

“We’re changing things,” Little River sighs, leaning back in her chair and closing her eyes wearily. “We in the new generation; taking over. It’s a time of flux, where the Hui Cha are casting off old traditions and starting to grow into something powerful.”

She makes a face. “And so of course there are those who would stifle us in the cradle - sorry,” she corrects herself. “Bad analogy. But you take my point. We’re on the verge of becoming something greater, and so she brings wickedness to plague us before we can grow.”

Pale Branch gestures with her glass of wine. “Or maybe she’s angry that not enough blood has been shed for my bitch of a sister-in-law,” she says.

“Well, if _that’s_ the case I’ll be sure to indulge her nicely when I take a band of bold young men to take some Hinya heads,” Little River sighs. “If not... well, perhaps I can pray to Riyaah MuHiitiyah to intercede with the local gods and beg us a respite from this plague. If not do away with it entirely.”

The other woman taps her fingers together. “And I’ll see who else might need your help,” she says. The unspoken Tengese words are hovering there. Other important women who will owe the two of them if Little River can save their children.

Little River nods in gratitude. “I’ll be sure to visit again when I can, though Atiya will be saying at Silver Lotus until this epidemic has passed.” And she’ll give Pale River further check-ups whenever she does, she doesn’t need to say. More attention will benefit the little girl, who’s worse off than her brother. “I’m glad you called me. They both have a good chance of getting through this now.”

There’s an exhausted, worried smile on Pale Branch’s lips. “Thank you. Friend.  Speak with Ruby Tiger for the men.  Her brother will be leading them - second to you, of course.”

* * *

The lords of the Hui Cha are in meeting - called here by Little River. There are rumours spreading around, and there have been for a while. Ever since she left for Shuu Mua with hand-picked men. Not necessarily the men they would have hand-picked, either. Young men. Relatives of the clique of women who side with her, for the most part.

The door swings open, and Little River enters, in her armour - flanked by four young men.

Each of them have a waxed bag.

“Lords of the Hui Cha!” Little River announces. She and the men take their places by her seat. “Our sister Pretty Peacock is avenged!”

And they empty the bags onto the table. Five heads roll out.

Hinya Meo, young and brash, cocksure princeling.

Hinya Lei, an older woman, the same age that Pretty Peacock had been.

Sabani Ain, a bearded man from further north, head of the slave guards and soldiers of the Hinya.

Hinya Bani, their treasurer, her face nearly cloven in two by the blow that killed her.

And Hinya Chao. The matriarch. Once-brilliant blue eyes, closed in death.

“Not all of us returned,” she says gravely. “But our fallen died nobly and bravely, in the cause of vengeance, and took many Hinya with them as they fell.”

Her four flanking survivors nod, and - in an impressive display of respect for men of different families, many of them rivals - murmur brief prayers honouring their losses.

“And the damage we did was crippling,” Little River continues, her voice strong. “The Hinya have learned well this day that the Hui Cha are to be feared. We are not cowards who will back down from threats or allow insults to go unpunished. Our vengeance cannot be hidden from behind fleets. No! A strike against us _will not_ go unanswered, as we have answered their assassination of our elder with the blood of theirs.”

Jade Fox stares at the heads, nose wrinkling as the scent of decay wafts over. “They will remember this,” he says, voice soft.

“Hah! They certainly will!” Lucky Wolf crows. “That’ll show them - and all the other Raraan Ge families. Strike against us and lose your head!”

“Had we not struck - had we shrunk from war and let their assassination pass and withdrawn our blockade at the first frown from the satrap,” says Little River darkly, “they would have remembered _that_ , my lord.” There is a very, very faint stress on the _’my’_ in her voice. A possessive too subtle to challenge directly. “This way, the Hui Cha are known for strength. Even if they nurse grudges, it is a better reputation than weakness.”

Sea Eagle sits back, stroking his beard. “I think,” he observes, “that given once again you have brought death into this chamber, Little River, it would behove you to be generous in your donations to the Golden Lord.” One eyebrow quirks up. “After all, his priests keep us safe from angry ghosts - and the curses of the Hinya will be directed at your name.”

Her eyes flick to him, and she bows. “Lord Sea Eagle is wise in his council,” she acknowledges. “I believe we can call the war concluded - the Hinya will certainly be in no shape to continue it, with their leaders dead and the rice harvest due soon. As such, I will retire to my estate and focus once more on the temples. Perhaps if I please the Golden Lord with my offerings, he will spare us from the sickness that plagues Saata.”

“That would be proper,” Jade Fox says. “Now, please. Get those heads out of here before they spread their taint.”

* * *

“... but you didn’t actually sit back and behave yourself, did you?” asks Haneyl sceptically. She’s browner than ever, and laden with trinkets, new jewellery, and gem-studded ties in her hair.  She’s wearing something that pushes even Keris’s tolerant standards of dress.  It seems to largely be comprised of gaudy feathers and gold.  Her thigh-high boots are crocodile-skin with tiger-fur trimmings.  


“This is mama,” Rathan says, rolling his eyes. He has a very excited-to-see-him Oula who’s refusing to let go, and a mild case of sunburn. He’s somewhat more restrained than Haneyl in his trinket collection and his clothes are certainly simpler, but his horns are covered by his broad hat trimmed with jade flakes. “Of course she didn’t. What have you been up to while they thought you were being a quiet, well-behaved little girl?”

“I _partly_ behaved myself,” says Keris; her protestations of innocence rather let down by her smug tone. “I did make quite a few donations to the temples, after all. That counts, right?”

Haneyl huffs up her cheeks. “You better have been buying influence,” she demands. “I - oh, and you too, I guess - worked hard to get our hands on that money. Just giving it away to a priest is wrong.” She puts one hand on her chest. “Speaking as a demon lord who outranks the gods themselves, we need the money more than them.”

“Is that all there is with you?” Oula asks cattily, her head nestled up against Rathan’s neck.

“Relax,” Keris soothes. “It was for a good cause. Namely, getting me close enough to the temples that I could start corrupting some of the local gods to our side. Or replacing them, in one or two cases. And a few Hui Cha women now owe me for saving their heirs, so that’ll come in handy later.”

“Hmmmph,” Haneyl says, pouting. “Well, while you were out there losing money, we were out there making it. Do you want to know what wonderful things I did?”

Keris sits forward and smiles. “I am _rapt_ with attention,” she says. Movement behind her daughter catches her attention, and she grins. “As are the twins, it seems,” she adds, as Kali executes an awkward flapping pounce-leap from the top of a set of shelves towards Haneyl’s head.

Haneyl catches her little sister in her hair. “Haven’t you gotten big?” she says, sweeping her around to a cuddle.

“Yep!” Kali says brightly. “Big Hany! You’re being a bird!”

“Birds are wonderful,” Haneyl agrees. “These feathers came from a breed of sicklebird from deep, deep south - south even of the Anarchy.”

“She stole it,” Rathan contributes.

“Did not! I honourably killed the leader of those people and took it! It’s entirely their fault for them getting prissy about me killing their uppity little god and raiding his sanctum!” Haneyl pulls a face. “He threw lightning at me! And called me a demon in a _very_ offensive tone!”

“How dare he,” drawls Keris, leaning back and listening in amusement. “And you, Rathan? How was your sailing? Oh! Did you bring me back lots of pretty maps?”

The story comes out. In essence, her little babies have been rampaging across the Far South West like a hurricane for the last season and a half. Rathan has a number of finely made maps - made with the help of the little clay cherub he took along, so they’re pretty enough for Keris - and he patiently explains to his mother that there’s a number of new routes here, taking advantage of early year winds that should let people who use them get to the Deep South faster after hurricane season. 

He also, he adds in a rather aggrieved tone, has been helping cover up and smooth over his little sister’s debaucheries.

“That’s such a harsh word,” Haneyl says mildly.

“You don’t deny it’s accurate!” Rathan pulls a face. “It’s mortifying how you carry on!”

“Now you’re sounding like Eko.”

“Eko has a point!”

By all accounts - or at least Rathan’s account - Haneyl has been busy. Very busy. In between stealing things and sampling the local delicacies, she’s been gracing the courts of petty princes and pirate lords. And more than just their courts.

Keris’s face grows redder and redder as she realises the extent of what her daughter has been doing - and how she’s been cold-bloodedly using her looks, her favours and her body to get trading contracts and exploitative deals signed. And her mind boggles slightly at the wealth Haneyl has been accumulating from that.

“Can we, maybe...” she manages, blushing crimson and squirming uncomfortably, “focus on _other_ details? Please?” It had been bad enough when it was just Seresa. Keris’s _daughter_ using the same tactics is...

“The- the twins are listening, after all,” she blurts out. “Did you have to fight anything? Yes, yeah, tell me about any fights you got caught up in.” That’s a much safer topic, probably.

“Oh, those were just minor diversions,” Haneyl says.

Rathan snorts. “You went on about that tyrant lizard for a week.”

“I saved your backside, didn’t I?”

“You tore its throat out with your teeth and it bled all over me.”

Haneyl squares on her brother, Kali hugged close. “Oh, look at Mister ‘I can talk to it, get back Haneyl, let me show you how it’s done’. I didn’t want to! It totally ruined some very expensive clothes!”

((That sounds like an entertaining story.))  
((They had an argument over how to tame a tyrant lizard.))  
((In front of the tyrant lizard.))

Keris snickers. “So you had fun, then?”

Rathan huffs. “I’m not going off on my own with her without you to keep her under control for a long time.”

“You’re just jealous because you didn’t have Oula,” Haneyl says sulkily.

There’s a gentle noise from aforementioned demon. “Oh, that’s so sweet,” she says, kissing him on the cheek. “Is that true, Haneyl? Was he all frustrated by your wicked ways and wishing I was there?”

Keris hears Rathan mouth “do me a favour” to his little sister.

Haneyl sighs. “He was moping and a complete pain without you,” she says, uncrossing and crossing her legs. “Always leaning over the side of the boat and sighing.”

Oula’s pupils shift into hearts. “Oh,” she says softly. She kisses her boyfriend deeply, grinding up against him.

Keris grins. “Oula missed you too- Oula, not in public. Tone it down.”

“Of course, my queen,” Oula says. She perks up. “Then me and Rathan will be leaving for sorcery lessons.”

Haneyl grins wickedly. “Look, if it’ll stop his whining, sorcery him off all you want. Counter his magic. Message his infallible.” The grin becomes a smirk. “Teach him the little death of obsidian butterflies.”

It’s not entirely clear whether the gasped “Haneyl” comes from Keris or Rathan first, but they’re both scarlet red.

Oula for her part clears her throat, daintily rising. “Your suggestions are, of course , appreciated Princess Haneyl. And-”

But whatever she was about to say is broken by a knock at the door. Before anyone can answer it, though, Asarin sweeps in. Her hair is burning brighter than usual, her cheeks are flushed, and she has a particularly smug smile on her face.

Then she pauses and stares at Haneyl. “What in all of _hell_ are you wearing?” she demands.

“Something that shows off the figure I have and you lack,” Haneyl snaps back.

“Two and a half seconds,” Keris mutters in despair. _“Two and a half seconds_ , Haneyl, before pissing Asarin off. _Really?”_

“It’s not _my_ fault she’s five thousand years old and still as flat as a washing board,” Haneyl mutters, though fortunately it’s below her breath.

“Oh well, she’s just a _child_ and can’t be expected to know any better,” Asarin says archly, looking down her nose in an upward direction at Haneyl.

“Please don’t break my estate,” groans Keris, sinking her head into her hands.  She really wishes her friend and her daughter didn't rankle each other so much. “I’ve still got two wings to renovate, I do not need to deal with you wrecking the ones I’ve mostly fixed.”

Asarin settles herself down. Her long dress has mud around the hems. Keris remembers she’s been a bit evasive after Calibration - still somewhat scared off by the fact that Keris has a relationship of sorts with Adorjan. “Well, unlike your disgraceful daughter who no doubt has been carrying on further South, I'm back from Shuu Mua again. I’ve been trying to see if there were any traces left of other places I once knew in surrounding islands - oh, do thank Eko for the loan of the ribbon horse, they’re such quiet beasts, just marvellous.”

“Oh, trust me, I’ve thanked her plenty,” Keris agrees, smiling. At least she's back to making catty comments about Haneyl, which are frankly comments Keris has thought herself. “They’re so much better than agatae - faster _and_ quieter! Did you have any luck in looking around?”

“Of sorts.” Asarin smiles, with a hint of sorrow. “I recalled there was a city in the heart of that island. Ah, I was bound to serve a moonchild when I sacked it and plundered its armour factorium. Now that was a battle!” She claps her hands together. “And I found it! Keris, I found it - and the ruins of a memorial to the devastation caused by the wretched Anathema and his terrible demon masters! Keris, they called me a terrible demon and his master!” Her hair burns even brighter, no longer even capable of passing for brown hair.

“Well, naturally,” Keris smiles. “I imagine they’d never seen a lady of your might before - and just assumed he’d bent the knee to you as was proper.”

“And the city itself... well, a good half of it is so polluted by the wyld that I kept at a safe distance, but as for the rest, there are the ruins of old buildings and even a few standing walls between the jungle canopy.” Asarin leans forwards, hands folded on her lap. “Keris, we should see what’s survived. The ruins don’t seem to have been touched recently, except by those disgusting little hobgoblins - but I remember Kokunga! Perhaps some of the workshops that survived me - or were rebuilt - may still be there!”

_That_ gets Keris’s attention, and she rolls to her feet as her eyes widen. “Oh _ho_ ,” she hums. “Workshops? I’m definitely interested in workshops.” She purses her lips. “We’ll have to bring some of Vali’s keruby - the worker ones. Maybe a few dragon aides and some marottes, too. It’ll depend on how much is left.”

She grins. “And if I can work out Testolagh’s wyld-shaping trick by then, we can deal with the pollution, too. Even if I haven’t, I can use the time to study it. I’ll just need to set something up to cover for my absence here.”

“I’m coming too,” Haneyl says quickly.

“Excuse me, the grown-ups are talking,” Asarin says archly.

“I suppose I can,” Rathan adds. “And Vali will love this when he gets back with Testolagh - which should be soon from the message I got from Oula, if Testolagh’s heading to the Wailing Fen.” He sighs “I bet there are dragon statues everywhere.” 

“No, no, no, this is between me and Keris,” Asarin repeats.

That’s enough to get both Rathan and Haneyl glaring at her.  If her babies have one adorable-yet-troublemaking habit - and they have many more than one - it's that they'll immediately turn on an outsider who starts making trouble for one of them.  


“This is a matter for adults,” Asarin says.

Hey, what’s going on in this place, can’t help but hear some conspiracy and also her bestie being back, Eko gestures, stepping out from directly behind Keris where she could _swear_ she hadn’t been before.

“Stop _doing_ that!” Keris yelps. “Look, Asarin, do you mind if it’s a... group thing? You have to admit more people will make it easier to reclaim the city.”

“Well,” Asarin says, glancing more at Eko than anyone else. “I suppose at the very least they can help while _we_ look at the place.”

“Well then!” Keris claps her hands, and Kali giggles and mimics the gesture. “It’s decided. Once I set things up for Little River’s absence - or a stand-in - we’ll make it a family holiday.”


	7. Chapter 7

It’s dark in the Jade Carnation. Not pitch black, but just enough that there are always a few more shadows than you expect. So you can’t easily see who the other guests are. So all the attention is on the singers and the performers on stage; lit by many-coloured paper lanterns that cast a confusing mix of colours. 

But still, despite the unusual decorations, it’s made its name as an interesting club. Beautiful décor and beautiful performers. The man on stage, crooning out a gentle melody, is a sparkling example of that. He’s Tengese, but there’s something mysterious about those dark eyes, shaggy hair, and the hint of hair that comes out of the black silk wrap that’s the only thing he wears. The audience here is mostly female, and as the shadows play around him, at least half of them are sure he’s singing to them personally.

Little River sits back in her spectator’s box, along with her guests. Golden Child is on her right, and she isn’t paying much attention to the man on stage. She’s glancing up at the veiled box, where Tenné Cinnamon is seated. Cherry Blossom is there, and in theory she’s the most important one as she’s Peaceful Wave’s husband. From the point of view of the onlookers, this is Golden Child currying favour by inviting a woman who slightly - but only slightly - outranks her to some entertainment at a place she sponsors.

Only... that’s not really what’s happening. Cherry Blossom is just an excuse for the third rank women here to associate with Golden Child. She’s - ha - cherry-picking them. Golden Child knows a lot of those lower tier women. Knows the ones with ambitions - and knows the ones who have a fondness for the fairer sex. And of those ones, she’s starting to introduce them to Cinnamon. Buying them private dances. Helping out with the little issues in their lives.  Pulling on past connections and bringing them into her debt in the way the women of the Hui Cha always do.  Only, now she serves a darker mistress as she brings her chosen recruits into contact with the hidden cultist Cinnamon and the demon lord Seresa.  


And it's working.

Why, Hui Cha Little Bird is here, and though she sits respectably behind Little River, the Dragonblood has no idea that her trusted mediator and procurer now owes her allegiance to another. Surely the proud Terrestrial would be furious if she knew that Little Bird sacrificed a black rooster to the demons that Cinnamon serves, pledging a vile oath to serve the priestess of the Yozis in all ways in a debauched ritual in the basement of the Jade Carnation. Little Bird has coupled with the demon lady Seresa and betrayed her husband. The tattoo of a feathered serpent coils across her body, a mark of her enslavement - and empowerment - by hellspawn.  She has studied dark magic with the familiars of her new mistress; damned herself for their mystic arts that she could never have learned otherwise. 

And she’s not the only one. Half the ladies in this box have taken Cinnamon’s vile oaths, and come to this club and into the hidden basements to indulge in vice and demonic corruption.  More are being worked on - and are already falling.  Only a few have proven proof to the blandishments and will progress no further down this path; will never see the alluring-yet-wicked shrines down below.  


The owner of this temple to performance and beauty feels the eyes on her, somehow, and glances down at her lover, Golden Child. Her grey eyes crease in a faint smile, before she goes back to watching the dancer on-stage. And making idle conversation with the Lintha cultist beside her, of course.

Oh yes, Cinnamon knows about that. But she hasn’t made anyone else aware, least of all Cherry Blossom. Charitable Peach’s service to her mother's Lintha masters is something Keris has decided to keep separated from her own, more artistically-inclined ladies. It’s safer that way - and she’s determined to keep her new people safe. She’s still working on ideas for how they might lock their own knowledge of their deeds away, and so claim with complete sincerity that they know nothing of any dark cults in Saata.

“So,” murmurs Golden Child, sitting there comfortably. She’s not interested in the singer for all his handsomeness, but she’s using the chance to talk to Little River. “You’re off on another boat trip, mmm?”

“Not quite as urgent this time, but yes,” the Dragonblood smiles. Stories of how her extensive efforts in silverwork had driven her to go meditate in a place sacred to Water for her baby’s health have spread - as well as a few whispers that maybe her time spent in the forge had contributed to little Hui Cha Atiya being born sickly.

Not that the latter are ever whispered where the ferocious mother might hear them.

“This time it’s more of an exploratory tour,” she says, with little of the menace or haughtiness attached to her reputation. “I want to get a good look around the other side of Shuu Mua and survey some of the islands to the south and west. Who knows? We may strike lucky and find a place suitable for rice and food crops.”

Her eyes meet Golden Child's, who had been one of the women who’d come with her to see the satrap. The leverage a new source of food for Saata would give them goes unsaid, even if it is a long shot.

“And I suppose it’s a good idea to make sure your daughter is away from here until the scarlet fever burns out,” Golden Child observes. She glances back at Little Bird. “Still, you leave your affairs here in good hands.”

“Yes, Little Bird has done good work,” Little River nods, approving - and utterly ignorant of the viper behind her. There’ll be no need for Golden Child’s mistress to use the dragon’s absence to gain influence over her holdings; not when they’ll be left right in the palm of a cultist.

“I’m still not content with the quality coming out of Shining Foam,” she adds with a sigh, “but that can wait a season in favour of Atiya’s health. And I’m considering taking Two Opal with me. Maybe a reminder of how harsh the world beyond Memory of a Golden Land can be will temper her... temperament.”

There’s polite laughter from the women around her. Many of them have heard stories of Little River’s extravagant, showy ward - and seen that strange little girl dance in the festivals. She’s talented, but everyone knows she’s very hard to manage.

The set comes to an end, and the singer vanishes into the shadows, returning only for his encore. The ladies come together to speak of this and Cherry Blossom is her usual spoiled bubbly self. It’s when she mentions she’s getting tired that everyone knows it’s over and people are heading home. Golden Child kisses Little River once on each cheek, and sees her out - she’s staying for a little longer, she mentions.

Little River nods, leaving - only to come back around the back and releases her shadow as she takes on her natural shape. One by one, the ladies who haven’t left are drifting in through an entrance to the lower levels that no one else seems to notice. And her keen ears can hear the voices from down below. The singer - Seresa in truth - has shed that male form, taking on something more to her liking. The ladies are gathering. They await their priestess, Cinnamon.

She descends with easy grace and a smile, her hair coiling behind her, and enters the room. No grand sweeping entrance for her, no overtly sexual saunter. No, Cinnamon strolls in with the casual comfort of one who belongs, trading nods and clasped hands and kisses with her flock - and that informality itself is sinful; for it treats this wicked place and these blasphemous rites as if they are nothing more than natural and everyday occurrences.

There’s a statue at the centre of this dark room under the dimly-lit dancing halls. It’s not a statue of Cinnamon. It’s a statue of her beautiful lady; the demon-goddess Nululi. Power glimmers within it for those who can sense such things, and her pose changes from rite to rite. At the moment her arms are cupped at waist-level, palms up, and Cinnamon sets the silver tray of drinks she’s brought down in the hands of her mistress.She brewed them herself, made with her alchemist's skills.  They might taste like wine, but there are all kinds of more exotic herbs from the far-away North mixed in.  And there is some of her own spit, changed by the gifts of the hungry swamp Metagaos into something that burrows into the mind.  Her ladies have told her before; this is the best wine they've ever drank.

When she turns, her smile is secretive and conspiratorial; inviting them in with her. Sharing the thrill of the taboo.

“Sisters,” she says. “Tonight was sweet, and I see you are merry. I’m glad my little temple has brought you pleasure. In that vein, let us return to an old favourite for tonight’s ritual. Who would like to go first for the Offering of Whispers?  Drink, sisters; drink and savour the gift of our dark mistress.”

Sweet music plays in the background. The chords of the harps of time. A female voice is raised in gentle melody, her wordless song slowly building to fill the notes with alien melodies. Saji has found a place she excels here, a parakeet with burning white eyes. Drums softly pound in unison. Keris found four of Vali’s golden-horned demons working serving jobs in the Spires, and hired them. They entertain her guests in all manners.

“I will,” says Scarlet Blossom, hands behind her back. This fine woman, a banker who handles some of the most sensitive details of Hui Cha Aranya’s internal interest rate setting, lays a small golden ring before the icon, then kneels and takes a deep sip of one of the drinks. She shudders as the strong, hallucinogen-laced spirits go down. “Nululi,” she whispers into the ears of the demon-goddess she has sworn herself to, “hear my transgression. I have adjusted my mistress’s rates by a quarter of a percent to favour Golden Child, knowing she would be taking a loan soon.  I betrayed my mistress for you.”

Cinnamon watches - and listens - as the offerings are given. Each woman confesses her secrets - her hidden shames, her dark and sordid deeds, her forbidden desires and fantasies. All the things society calls twisted or wrong; the acts the gods decry as blasphemy to deny men and women their honest pleasure.

They confess, and they give an offering - be it jewellery, a flower, or simply a renewed vow of service. They drink, and experience the emotions Keris has laced each cup with; the loyalty to each other, the determination to remain hidden. Under Nululi’s aegis, they are one - and with their secrets offered to her, freely, they are safe from other eyes.

And to all of it, Tenné Cinnamon listens. And smiles.

Eventually it is done. Cinnamon can hear the drugs kicking in with the changes to their bodies - the alcohol taking the edge off any inhibitions they have, the hallucinogens and the traces of herself she mixed in changing how they see the world. They’re not exactly seeing things that aren’t there, but their minds are being opened. This is a secret place. A safe place. A place where the outside rules don’t apply, as long as they’re loyal to the rest of their demon-worshipping sisterhood.  They savour the wine, and its demon-granted potency seeps into their mind without them even noticing, bringing a warmth and closeness to the other women they never would have had before they joined the cult.  


The music in the background shifts, taking on a sultry overtone, and the drums stop as the tarskae cease to play. They slip off their hooded robes, revealing their true forms underneath - three women and a man of beauty, golden horns sprouting from their skulls, tails lashing behind them, useless wings on full display. The only thing they wear is the traces of the scales that once covered them, artfully decorating their forms.

“Now, my precious ones,” Seresa says, stepping forwards in her midnight gown that's open to below the navel. “You have whispered your sins to the Artful Lady, and now she grants your _release_.” The word echoes around her tongue. “It is not wrong to take pleasure under her watchful eye, to revel, to accept the just rewards the cursed gods deny you.  Give your worship to her, and accept the power that comes back from her.   Love each other, my darlings. Accept and indulge, letting your true selves show.”

She takes Golden Child by the head, and kisses her deeply, tenderly. Each of the tarskae also picks a woman to kiss.  Some of the cultists pair off; others just wait for the attention of their hellish masters as they watch.  

Clothes are shed, revealing the feathered serpent tattoos that mark every member of this dark sisterhood.  Scarlet Blossom sinks to the ground, running her hand over her tattoo again and again, her pupils dilated.  “She's getting bigger,” she gasps.  She drank first and the drugs have had longest to take effect.  “I can feel her moving below my skin.  The bigger she gets, the more of her power enters me!  I am becoming her!  Nululi, grant me a true form as your priestess Cinnamon promised!  Free me from this human skin!  I want to become an undying demon, my princess!”  


The sound of the angyalkae reminds Keris of the music on Ipithymia.

Cinnamon herself doesn’t stay for the conclusion of the ritual. As their “eldest sister” and priestess, it’s her place to ritually stand guard without; keeping their safe space secret and protected for them to do as they will, hidden from the judging eyes of the gods. She, after all, is the most powerful of them all - and the first-sworn to Nululi, who guards her younger acolytes as they will one day guard and guide their own novices in turn.

Guards it from, for example, the dark-clad figure who’s waiting outside the door, hands balled into fists.

“So this is what you’ve been up to,” Calesco says, scowling and glaring up at her mother. Red eyes gleam behind her veil. “All... _this_. I was sure you were playing games so I made sure to be in the audience for that... that tarry _thing_ giving her pretending-to-be-a-man song. And look. I was right. Are you going to lie to me and tell me that what I think is going on in there isn’t?”

Keris blushes. “I... it’s not like that,” she defends, lamely. “It’s not some... exploitative thing. It’s... it’s sharing.”

“Sharing? Not exploitative?” Calesco’s voice rises. “You’re getting women to cheat on their husbands, you’re trapping them in oaths of loyalty, you’re infecting them with Haneyl and twisting their flesh, and you’re drawing them into the worship of Hell. And you call it not _exploitative_?”

“They... I’m not...” Keris stutters, thinking with a brief flash of resigned irony that this is the first time she _actually has_ had to protect the ritual from the judging eyes of a goddess. Or, well. Spirit.

“It’s about _intentions_ ,” she tries. “They still love their husbands! Some of them love them more now, even! They’re not _trapped_ by their oaths, they’re protected by them! And they’re not worshipping Hell.” She pauses. “Well, not most of Hell. Not the Yozis, not the Unquestionable. Just Lilunu. _She’s_ not cruel or vile or hateful. And I think the prayer will make her healthier.”

Calesco steps closer, white jade teeth flashing. “Do you really believe that?” she hisses. “And how many demons in there are just there to service,” the contempt is thick in her voice, “the cultists you’re trapping for the sake of your control and power?”

“None, by some counts,” Keris murmurs back, feeling her hackles rise. Maybe she’s been spending a bit too long with Rounen. “The only beings in there are the women, some citizens from the Spires and the City, and Seresa. Nothing Hellish-born. And they can leave any time they like.”

Her daughter sneers at her. “Oh, far be from it for me to change your mind,” she snaps, whirling on her heel and walking away. Her bare feet are soft against the stone. “Good day to you. _Madam_.”

((Calesco gets 10 successes on her sick burn))  
(( _Ouch_.))

* * *

It is perhaps because of that that things are a little tense on the family trip out. Everyone is there - Eko with Asarin, Rathan taking over the ship with Oula as a dolphin alongside, and Haneyl sunbathing on deck, next to Kali who’s discovered that it’s okay to lie there and let the sun shine down on you. Calesco is below decks, sulking. Vali and Zanara play a boardgame near the prow while Ogin watches and periodically tries to eat the stone tokens and Aiko tries to stop him eating pebbles. Atiya dozes out of the sun, watched over by demons. And hidden down in the hold is Evedeyl, who can’t be seen but Keris isn’t willing to go anywhere with all her family without another responsible adult to help her keep people under control.

They head around the coastline of Shuu Mua, coming ashore further west from the town where Keris has her guano warehouse. Shuu Mua rises ahead of them, wild and untamed and mountainous. The coastline is mangrove and swamps, but swiftly rises. Rainforest and bamboo grow on the slopes, and there’s snow that ripples with odd colours visible on the highest peak ahead of them. A sign of the wyld-taint that pollutes the island interior.

Nara stretches, a many-coloured statue boy whose stone bones click with the motion. Zana is painted on his back. “Oh, that’s nice, mama,” he says. “I’m getting kind of bored of school. I’ve done it for so long and I’ve learned everything but they just don’t accept I’m better than all the teachers. They should just give me my priesthood already.”

“Hmm,” Keris muses. “I can guess why they’re delaying. Is there anyone you can nudge into it? If only on the basis that giving you your priesthood would get you out of their classes.” She grins teasingly. “I heard something about a hole in the roof that it took them twenty minutes to realise was a chalk drawing?”

Nara rolls his eyes. “They’re just idiots who don’t appreciate art,” he mutters. “And they say I can’t be a priest until I’ve done at least six years, which is years and years and years!”

“I would have punched a hole in the ceiling if you wanted me to,” Vali says helpfully.

“You were down with Testolagh.”

“Yeah, but now I’m not.” Vali glances at Keris. “I mean, I wanted to go punch ghosts with him! Why didn’t you let me go with him to the Wailing Fen, mama? It would have been so cool! I wanna suplex a big ghost monster!”

“Well, if you want to miss out on the Shogunate city that probably has dragon stuff in it...” Keris drawls. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work so well as she’d hoped.

“Yeah, but punching ghosts, mum! I punched a bunch of faeries too! But I haven’t had a chance to beat up ghosts! And Testolagh’s super cool! Don’t you like him?” Vali’s eyes are sparking bright orange, and she can see he’s got a lot of wound up energy from being stuck on the boat for several days.

Keris winces. Testolagh’s last visit was...

... well, it was awkward. Very, very awkward. And had gone a lot, um, _further_ than his previous visits and their dalliances therein. Both in terms of how long it had taken and, um, how... involved it had gotten. Or maybe ‘extreme’ would be a better word.

Either way, it was a bit more ‘involved’ and ‘extreme’ than she’s entirely comfortable with, looking back, and Keris isn’t sure she very much likes the person she’d been during that night with him. Which is why it was with great relief that she packaged him off to the Wailing Fen for a season and then put another hundred miles or so of distance between them by heading to Shuu Mua.

“He’s... got his virtues,” she cringes in reply. “But we’re going to have much more fun in the mountains, okay? You can probably spar with Haneyl for a bit; it’s been ages since you’ve had a chance at that.”

With a boom he’s off to bother Haneyl - who’s carrying Kali and wearing so little that Asarin is refusing to look in her direction. It might have been deliberate that she set out in shorts that are barely more than a belt and a form-hugging white cotton vest she’s nearly spilling out of. The two women are like nails on chalkboard. At least it’s quieter when Keris’s friend won’t even look at Haneyl without muttering “disgraceful” and “like a neomah”.

Nara winces from the boom. “Well, I’m really looking forwards to the trip in Wood,” he says. “She-I really wants to see her mother, and Hell is really beautiful.”

“Still haven’t decided about her offer,” Keris sighs. “I dunno. Maybe this trip will help me make up my mind about it.” She doesn’t bother asking for Zanara’s opinion - they’ve made _that_ insistently clear from the moment she shared it with them.

Naturally Nara immediately starts listing off all the ways it’ll help Keris, and keeps on at it until Keris manages to make the excuse of having to attend to Atiya.

* * *

“And this,” Asarin says, after several days of hard travel which would have been much harder without Haneyl and her farisyya to assist with the terrain and Evedelyl’s ability to just smash through obstacles. Dramatically she poses at the top of the cliff that everyone else is scaling. “Behold! The lost city of Kokunga!”

When Keris scales the wall, babies in her hair, she gazes down upon the ruins.

There isn’t much to see. This isn’t like Eshtock, or Saata, or any of the other places she's seen where the marks of the old world are clear. The jungle really has consumed everything. There are only traces of stone nearby. She can see patterns where tall trees aren’t growing, which must be where walls once lay, and there’s white stone rising deeper in the valley. But she can’t trust her eyes. There are wavering heat-haze buildings that are only there out of the corner of her eyes, and half-way down the leaves start changing colour, becoming the fiery red of early Air in this place that never knows such cold.

Or maybe it does. They’re a kilometre up above sea level, and the climate is... surprisingly pleasant. It’s like a Nexan Season of Earth, maybe even a little cooler. It’s not as cold as a Tairan Air, certainly - but far, far cooler than the coast and Saata itself.

“Not huge,” Keris hums. “But damn, from the lines of some of those walls it must have been pretty impressive architecture. I wish I could’ve seen it standing.”

She pauses.

“Actually... Rounen! Make a note! Remind me to see if there are any past-viewing spells in Orabilis’s libraries over Wood. Or in anything I’ve got stashed at Silver Lotus. Or wherever. Asarin?” She glances at her friend. “You know of anything like that? I wouldn’t mind seeing your grand duel, if we could pluck it out of the land’s memories.”

Asarin shakes her head. “No walls,” she says. “Such a weak little place. Although,” she gestures over to the mountainside. “I found where the dragoncrawler tunnel emerged from the valley wall. It looks like they blew the charges there to collapse the entrance. I noted it as a civilised place to set up camp. There are a lot of chaos-beasts in these ruins. We don’t want them surrounding us.” 

She doesn’t wait for Keris, but orders two of the immaterial demons who’ve been trailing her in that direction. Keris doesn’t think they’re as pretty as hers. They’re lanky things, looking like a corpse of dried preserved leathery skin, with fire filling their interior. They’re wickedly fast and skilled climbers, though.

“Dragoncrawlers?” Keris asks as she trails along after them. “What kind of elemental pacts did the Shogunate even _have?”_

“No, no.” Asarin gives a ladylike chuckle behind her hand, even as she hoists up her skirts with the other to step across a tree root. “Dragoncrawlers were... hmm. Imagine a leviathan beetle that runs along a steel or jadesteel surface.”

Keris does. “... what happens when it gets hungry and leaves it?” she asks. “Or... oh, wait, you mean a machine?” Her lips work for a moment. “But that’d be... fuck, I don’t even... twenty tonnes? Fifty? More? How’d they _move_ it? You couldn’t get yeddim up here.”

She glances around at the jagged, mountainous, inhospitable terrain. “... could you?”

Asarin explains as they head towards the place she identified, the sound of Keris’s gaggle - and particularly towering Evedelyl’s footsteps - disturbing the brightly coloured birds. From what she says, a dragon-crawler is like... well, it’s like one of those jade needles that sailors use to find the direction of a pole, only they do it much, much more forcefully. They’re colossal things that ran along jadesteel roads that connected two special manse-hubs, pushing and pulling themselves along the track by the force of the lifeblood of Creation.

“Of course, darling, by the late Shogunate, they didn’t have enough jadesteel for such routes,” Asarin explains. “So they started using steel instead. Dreadfully foolish decision that does damage to the geomancy and doesn’t last nearly as long. But it works for maybe a hundred to fifty years if you have geomancers paying attention to the route.” She points up ahead, at a cave mouth the size of a building. “That’s the tunnel that it ran through - and I think the steel road has entirely rusted away.”

“She’s not wrong,” Vali says, awed. Digging into the ground, he presents flecks of red rust he found half a metre down. “Wow.” Dragging a finger through them, Keris licks it thoughtfully. The bitterness is almost enough to make her spit it out. Oh, there are traces of fire there, among the rust - but it’s almost lost. Lost in a heady, nauseating brew of chaos sickly-sweet and vile death, all layered on top of the rust flecks.

Keris shudders, and represses a gag. “This place wasn’t spared the Contagion, when it came,” she voices sadly. “Nor the chaos-tide. But yeah, I can taste the fire-essence under that.”

“Oh, yes, that was it! I do remember it!” Asarin says cheerfully. “All-Makers, it’s been so long. But there was a fire manse here, a big ugly blocky building with a single burning spire at the top.”

“We’ll make camp there, then. Mama?” Keris asks, looking up. “Can you help set up the outside bits if I get the entrance to our manor-sanctum stabilised?” She grins. “It’s one you’ll recognise.”

Ogin tilts his head as Keris slips her gold-and-adamant collar off, and Kali’s eyes light up. “Shiny!” she shrieks excitedly. “Shiny place! Mama mama mama, I wanna go in the shiny place!”

Keris kisses her fondly, and hopes to hell that the amount of family she has here will be enough to keep her hyperactive daughter entertained, because she won’t be doing any sleeping in this sanctum. Maybe they can take her outside for naps at night when she gets too exhausting.

Regardless, she sets the collar into a stable wall with a little of Oula’s help in sculpting a receptacle for it, and coaxes out the flickering door of red-and-silver anima-light that leads within.

Asarin nods. “I will let you get the children settled away while I set up something a bit more defensible around it,” she says. “After all, who knows what ill-mannered opportunists might try to steal treasures we find? Some of them might even be someone other than the shameless woman over there.”

“She’s not wrong,” Calesco says dryly. 

Indeed, Eko agrees, Haneyl is shameless.

“... I was talking about how she’s a thief.”

Eko considers the point. But they’re all thieves, she points out with a wobble of her hand.

Bravely, Asarin endures the chatter behind her back and instead has her demons start to gather her sticks for the fortification she plans to erect.

* * *

It’s starting to grow dark by the time people are settled and the arguments over rooms are concluded. Keris comes out to find that Asarin has put up a many-walled fort around their central place, with interior structures that Evedeyl is helping to roof over with branches and some of the demon leather that Asarin’s servants brought with them.

“I’d rather not go down there at night,” Asarin admits. “It’s not that I’m scared, of course. I’m just a little tired. And of course, some of you would probably wander into the wyld zone and then have problems getting out.” She looks over the gloomy valley. There’s opalescent lights shifting in the forest to the west, strange gleamings coming out from the dark jungle.

“I have got lost in a wyld zone before,” Keris admits unashamedly. “On this island, even. Probably best you keep an eye on me.”

She gives a tired groan as she flops down next to her friend. “That monument you found - to your fight,” she says, and grins. “The ‘demonic mistress’ of the moonchild who attacked here. Where is it? We can go see it in the morning.”

“Just on the outskirts.” Asarin pauses. “Or, well, what used to be the outskirts. They built a lot of new things in the... what, seventy years or so? I can’t remember exactly.” She laughs behind her hand, hair casting brow light around her. “Those mortals, so brief.”

Keris pouts. “Hey, I’m one of those ‘brief mortals’,” she complains. “Or... was? That’s weird to think about.” She wrinkles her nose. “Heck, you were around... thousands of years before I was born. That’s even weirder.” Glancing over, she considers Asarin. An ancient profound abyss of time stretching back five millennia to the overthrowing of the titans who shaped reality, she is... not. Decidedly not. At all.

Though it does raise the question, in the back of Keris’s mind, of what Asarin was like before the Shogunate. She styles herself as a lady of that era now, but... what was she during the High First Age? Yamal’s memories would be no help; Keris doubts he ever met her.

Asarin’s thoughts seem to be drifting in a similar direction. “It’s so sad,” she says softly, looking out over the shimmering valley. “I remember seeing the world ruled by the Dragonblooded. A world built by beings no stronger - at best - than myself, who had overthrown their cruel masters. There were many beautiful things there, and many cunning mechanisms.” She scuffs the dirt. “And now their great dragoncrawler tracks are but rust, and their bones are dust. Like the Silent Wind blew through this whole world.”

There’s a silence for a moment as Keris looks at her - really looks at her.

Maybe it’s not so surprising that Asarin looks up to the Shogunate after all. A group of beings like her... overthrew a ruling class of beings like...

... well, like Balanodo, obviously. But also like Keris.

“What’s gone can be rebuilt,” she offers after a while. “The beauty they made; it isn’t gone forever. And their heirs still rule this world.” She smirks. “For now.”

“Oh, forget them.” Asarin flaps her hand, hair flaring. “Those petty princes in their squalid cities do not understand, Keris. They are no better than ganglords; serfs and citizens ruling a region of blocks. Could a serf build a mechanism like that? No, it is gone.” She puts her hands on her hips. “And that is why it is better off in my hands than theirs. Or yours too, obviously.”

“Well then.” Keris claps her hands. “We better get some sleep, so we can go searching tomorrow.”

* * *

The next day the search begins not long after sunrise. That means that Rathan is not actually helping, because he’s ‘too tired from travelling’ and ‘Look, he’s looking after Ogin who’s still asleep’.

But Keris starts spreading out, searching for things with the help of Oula, Vali and Zanara - who she can actually trust, unlike her older children - taking advantage of her speed and ability to dart over the ground.

And by lunch time, she’s made a quite terrifying discovery. There’s a wide, wide swathe of land either side of the rusted away remnants of the track that she thought was a new expansion of the town. But it wasn’t built in stone. Instead, there’s a strange not-leather that hasn’t rotted she keeps on finding in Vali’s pits. It’s like canvas, almost. Maybe it’s an artificial roof? 

And under that? The remnants of bed after bed. Metal implements that vaguely resemble surgical tools or the ribs of tents. Rows upon rows of these not-houses, full of beds.

And bones.

The soil here is _sour_ with death.

She knows what this is. She... she remembers what happened when plague hit Nexus when she was sixteen. There was a slum district, just by the walls, where it was really bad. And so the Council had their mercenaries march everyone out of the city, into a tent town, and burned that slum district down. And had sorcerers call up a gateless wall around the tent city, and threw in food as long as people paid them to feed their trapped friends and relatives. Wasn’t long. It was a slum district.

Keris heard that only one in ten of the people from Hillmarsh made it out of ‘quarantine’, that’s what they called it. They sold the slum district they’d burned down to some Guild fat cat who built more slum housing there.

Wide-eyed, she stares at the mass grave. Shivers travel up her spine as she creeps through the remnants of hospital beds - no, be honest, of _quarantine_ beds. There are medical tools here, signs of efforts to slow or study the sickness... but she doubts anyone believed they could stop it.

“What’s the matter, Aunty?” Oula asks, playing with interest with some of the metal.

“A lot of people died here,” Keris mutters. “Of a plague so bad it killed anything it touched.” A hair-tendril swats Oula’s hand away from the medical tools. “Don’t mess with them just yet. It’s been almost eight hundred years, but there may still be some sickness lingering in what’s left.” Oula flinches away from that, shivering and wiping her hand on the living grass outside the quarantine camp.

When they regather for a meal, Eko and Asarin are beaming like... well, like an Eko who’s been cleverer than everyone else. And insist on letting everyone else talk.

“I found what I think was a restaurant,” Haneyl says. “It was barely standing, and the roof was gone, but there were all these faded red-grey tables that were still there. And the remnants of some kind of cooking thing. It looked like it was made to make a lot of food quickly, I think.”

Calesco sighs. “I flew up to the mountain top to get away from the noise. There are hot springs up there.”

“Wait, what?” Haneyl perks up. “I suppose that makes sense. The whole area is volcanic.”

Keris grimaces. “You win,” she grumbles. “We found a plague pit. Quarantine town, I think. There was some medical equipment, but... I don’t think I want to try and salvage any of it until it’s been purified. A lot. By several different things.”

Everyone waits for Eko and Asarin to speak. Eventually, Rathan yawns “Get on with it.”

“You’re right when you say it’s a plague town,” Asarin says smugly. “Or, rather, they were moving people here. Because I followed the tracks...”

Eko silently coughs.

“... yes, true, Eko followed the tracks and then came running back gesturing wildly, and there’s a crater that looks like a manse blew up and glassed a pit. And the remnants of a ten-carriage dragoncrawler. It looks like it’s Otaran, from their Military Biohazard Containment Division. I do believe that the manse melted down and so the dragoncrawler was trapped here.”

Keris blinks for a moment.

“... when you say a ten-carriage dragon crawler,” she checks. “You mean, like... one of the ones with giant bits of jade on each end. Right?”

“Well, I wouldn’t call it _giant_ ,” Asarin says with a wave of her hand. “It’s only a double-decker.”

Keris giggles, high and delighted. “Okay,” she grins. “Yes. You win.”

Eko giggles into her hand. It’s even better than Mama thinks, she gestures teasingly. Even better. For one, it’s right by the edge of where the water starts getting rainbows in it, so they’ll probably be attacked by goblins when looking at it! It’ll be fun!

“That is fun,” Vali agrees, nodding.

Keris sighs. “Well then, ladies and gentlemen,” she says. “I suppose this afternoon we go fae-hunting.”

* * *

It’s quiet as they crunch their way through the heavily overgrown jungle, along the traces of rust in the soil. The air is pleasantly cool and there’s a wind blowing that smells... wrong. Of things that aren’t as they should be. The birds have too many colours and the insects are too large.

Zanara is not with them. They were very not happy to be left out. Zana whined and whined and whined and in the end Evedelyl simply pulled her into a hug and stopped her escaping. That didn’t stop Zana swearing quite a lot. Keris is afraid that Kali heard it all. Ogin certainly did.

On the other hand, the kind of wyld-twisted beasts they find here aren’t too much threat for a group that consists of demon lords and a princess of the green sun.

“This... feels somewhat unfair,” Haneyl observes, splattered with blood from where a sickle bird made the mistake of trying to fight back when she tried to catch it. “It thought just because it had two heads, it could bite me.”

((Random attack on Haneyl ends in... horrific curbstomp.))  
((*snrrk*))

Keris nods. “Remember the hungry mountain,” she tells her two eldest. “This is like the outermost bit, where those mutants were living. Just beasts and Creation-life that’ve been twisted a bit. There’ll be bigger threats lurking deeper in.”

It takes over an hour of careful pacing before they get to the place Eko had pointed out.

“It’s a giant dragon’s head!” Vali crows, staring at the green-stained thing that stares at them.

It’s like a house. This ancient thing, rising out of the jungle, covered in vegetation that grows atop it. It’s long and thin, and puts Keris vaguely in mind of some of the great merchant caravans that rumbled into Nexus, but none of them were this massive, this imposing, made of this much metal that had survived even seven hundred years. 

“Before the carriages start, you have one of the attractor-repulsors,” Asarin says, enjoying everyone listening to her. “Yes, they were usually made to look like dragon’s heads. Hence the name. This is the rearmost one - the one away from the manse, which didn’t melt down completely when it blew and started a cascade in the local dragon lines. But it looks heavily damaged.”

Keris winces. “Dragon line meltdown. During the Contagion. Alongside a manse detonation. That must have been fun.” She puts shoulder and palms to the enormous head, slams four hair tendrils into the ground and another two into its side, braces herself and _heaves_.

Absolutely nothing happens. She might as well be straining against a layer of the City. After a moment’s more experimental strain, Keris relaxes with a grunt.

“Salvaging this,” she says, “is going to be a mother-and-queen of a bitch.”

Asarin laughs. “Well, of course. It’s the work of a hundred demon slaves to carry something like that across the desert. I have quite a few at home - there are uses for them, if you have the artisans to adapt them to pull against the flesh of the All-Makers.” She knocks some dirt off the dragon’s head. “But just the attractor-repulsor surviving isn’t the most impressive part. Those things are durable. No, look at this.” She clambers up the face of the dragon, and Keris follows her.

Her mouth drops open when she sees a road of roofs, reaching - gods, hundreds of metres. Some of them have melted or been wrecked, but this whole vehicle must have been half a kilometre long! There are trees growing up here, on built up soil, but there’s still occasional bits of the original white and green paint visible.

“What was this _carrying?”_ she whispers. “You said... ‘Ontaran’? Or something about it being here to fight the plague, yes?”

“Otaran, actually,” Asarin says smugly, with a flip of her cape. “Otaran Military Biohazard Containment Division. Otara was one of the late Shogunate states, after the Central Military Command had functionally fractured between the daimyos. Your... Blue Monkey Shogunate, yes? One of the Otaran Gens had a blue monkey as its crest.” She gestures widely. “This whole region was part of Otara.

She rocks back and forth on her heels. “Now, they might have changed these things in a time of plague, but I have quite a library of their technical things. The protocol would be that they’d have two to three patient transports, two medical supplies, a troop bay positioned to stop patient outbreak, then a few miscellaneous cargo pods. Then two vehicle bays - transport crawlers, likely, and another troop bay. And I do believe that what we have ahead of us is a still-sealed patient transport, so we know which end we’re at.”

Keris’s eyes widen. “This... this is a treasure trove, isn’t it?” she murmurs. “Alright. Vali, up on the dragon head. See if you can clean the grime off it, and if anything comes at us from deeper into the wyld zone, warn us with a boom as you punch it. Eko, have a run. Scout out the area a bit more, see if anything came off the crawler when it crashed - if it came to a stop hard, I bet some things got flung off or out or both. Support Vali if anything shows up. Haneyl, you’re on the inside with me. Asarin...”

She smiles, and gestures. “You’re the lady who knows what she’s doing. This is your show. Take us through, carriage by carriage.”

Asarin drops down, pulling her oversized hammer out of her burning hair. “Well, let’s see then,” she says, staring at the endmost door. She pulls back, and...

... time bleed to black and white and red for Keris as she watches the first signs of movement from the hammer swung at the door and what is it what is the danger oh _oh no she said it’s a stillsealedpatienttransport-!_

“STOP!” she screams, diving forward with hair and Lance to twist the hammer out of Asarin’s hands and send it off-course. The hammer slams down. Into the wet earth, throwing up mounds of dirt and mud over the three women.

“What are you doing?” Asarin roars, hair igniting in a halo of brown flame.

“You said,” Keris pants, hyperventilating and shaking, “y-you said _still-sealed_. Right? _What’s sealed in it?”_

There follows one of those long, horrible moments of dawning comprehension and rising dread for all concerned. Asarin’s hair dies down, and she irritably resettles herself. “Well, why didn’t you think of that sooner?” she retorts, hackles up.

“You’re the one who decided to smash the door down,” Haneyl points out.

“Yes, because those locks are really hard to open without the right pass! You’re speaking from ignorance, little girl!”

“Little girl?” Now Haneyl’s hair is burning too.

“How about we take a moment to celebrate _not dying just now,”_ Keris interrupts. “And... start with the next carriage along. We’ll leave the patient transport until we have something that can deal with whatever might be inside.”

The next one, Asarin identifies as another patient transport. Also still sealed. Those Shogunate sorcerer-engineers knew what they were doing, so long ago. “How tough,” they had asked themselves, “do we want to make these things that could be transporting people with horribly virulent diseases?” And then they decided to make them tough enough to last 700 years in all weathers, after a manse meltdown in close proximity.

Keris is unspeakably grateful to them, and doesn’t care even a little bit that they would have tried to kill her on sight for being a demonic Anathema.

The next two carriages are of different construction. “Medical supplies,” Asarin says, after wiping off a plate by a door to read the High Realm there. “Good, so my manuals were at least somewhat up to date.” She puts a fist through the door, breaking the lock off, and steps inside. The air in here is stale, and smells of alchemy. The internal lights are all off, but with Haneyl and Asarin both here there’s a sick greenish-brown light. 

It looks like a warehouse in here, if you made the walls out of metal and disintegrating webbing. But it’s mostly been emptied out - a few boxes remain made of strange Shogunate metal alloys, but on inspection they’re empty.

“Tch,” Asarin says. “I guess they must have already delivered their supplies.”

“Or run out,” Haneyl says. It’s not clear if she’s being morbid or just wanting to contradict Asarin, but the smaller woman twitches.

“Maybe.”

Wandering through the carriages, Keris pokes things, licks things and sniffs at the air. The alchemy-scents here smell good to her - faded, washed-out, but still heavy with the chemicals that went into them. The alloys are advanced Shogunate stuff of some sort, but even with everything gone, she can get an idea of what might have been here.

On her forehead, a green circle burns.

There are stains in here - things she might be able to try to reverse-engineer if she has the time to work out what they’ve broken into.

But even if she can’t... this carriage alone is a tidy sum of Shogunate alloys. It’s two storeys high - you could probably build a boat with a light and strong hull from the flat plating. And there’s probably traces of jade in the lighting, the conduits...

Vaguely, she’s aware she’s making a high-pitched noise of glee. One that’s getting her two companions to look at her funny. Clearing her throat, Keris shakes herself out of it.

“This is very, very useful,” she says, attempting formality again. “Even the crawler hull is a brilliant find.”

The next one along would have been the same, but this one was ruptured and broken. There’s bamboo growing out from the middle of the broken roof, and the soil seems to have corroded the metal once it got past the layers of paint. There’s probably more metal here of value, but nothing else.

But after that comes what Asarin called a trooper bay, and oddly enough it reminds Keris of the Lookshyian barracks, just a bit. It’s sparse inside, and there’s mouldering paper and traces of personal effects. There’s a long-forgotten plate on one of the tables, stained black. She thinks it was abandoned in a hurry. Traces of essence-flux fire on the top floor, too - either a Terrestrial was here, or more likely it was the effects of the manse melting down.

There’s armour here, though, spares and replacements in a locked armoury that Asarin smashes down the door to - strange Shogunate white and green armour that reminds her of insects. 

“Model 28 ‘Hissing Serpent’ containment armour,” Asarin says, looking over it with a practiced eye. “It’s a variant of the Model 24, with air-hearthstone converters on the back. Fairly clumsy. And... yes.” She picks up a device in both hands. It looks like a spear with a wide nozzle for a head. “This would be a Model 14 ‘Honest Burial’ Thermic Lance. So the humans in this armour could burn bodies and contaminated dwellings. Or rebels, of course. I’ve adapted this to work with vitriol for assaults on fortified locations.”

“Ooo,” Keris coos, always happy to look at new spears. “Let’s see?”

She gives the weapon a few experimental twirls. “So, firewand? It spews flame at stuff?” She wrinkles her nose. “Pretty useless in combat, but I can see how it’d be good as a mid-range weapon. Though not as good as my Lance,” she adds, glancing out to where Eko carries her favoured weapon as an anchor to Creation.

“We can seal this one up, and see what else this was carrying,” Asarin says.

The next one is like the medical supply carriages in design, but rather than being mostly empty, there’s plenty of crates in here, tossed around like toys. Asarin brushes off the dirt. “Ration packs,” she reads, moving to the next one. “Oh, tents. Water purification tablets. Oh, this sort of thing. The sort of things humans need.” She doesn’t sound very interested.

There’s a breaking sound as Haneyl pries off one of the tops of the ration packs crates, and pulls out a flaking red packet. “Beef and chilli noodles,” she reads hesitantly, before shrugging, tearing off the top, and pouring the dusty and pulverised noodles into her mouth. “Bit dry,” she says, crunching.

Asarin sighs. “It’s dehydrated, you idiot.”

((... is that an instant ramen pack?))  
((It is something like that, yes.))  
((You are terrible.))

Keris cocks her head and pokes into another of the crates, examining the bricks and packets inside. “How’d they make these?” she asks. “If they filled carriages _this_ size with them,” she waves vaguely at the huge two-storey space, “they must’ve been churning them out in bulk, right?”

“Oh yes, they had whole facilities that would do nothing but make these kinds of ration packs,” Asarin says. “Hundreds - thousands - an hour.” She sighs. “I destroyed quite a few. The Moon-Chosen really liked to blow up food production facilities.”

“Hmm,” says Keris. It’s a short, clinical sound, and she shares a glance with Haneyl as she makes it. Both of them are thinking of what a facility like that could do in their own hands.

“I mean, they’re not great,” Haneyl says, swallowing and getting stale yellow dust over her face as she tries to lick the remnants of the powder from the inside of the pack. “It’s bland. But it is seven hundred years old. Oh hey, they have other flavours...”

“Haneyl, sweetheart,” Keris sighs. “Hold onto them for now and try them with water later. Come on, let’s try the next carriage. Eko?” She doesn’t bother raising her voice. “Anything interesting outside? Get Vali to make a bang if so.”

There’s no bang, which suggests either she hasn’t found anything or is playing a prank. 

The next carriage is much the same as this one - though somewhat emptier.

But the next one is a very different structure, with sliding metal slats bound shut with overgrown vines. If Keris had to guess, she suspects the slats would open up vertically if this machine was working.  There's no sign of a second floor here - no higher up windows, just these oversized slat-doors.  


When Haneyl, leading, sticks her head into the main body of the carrier, she gasps. “Mama!”

Because, there, backs against each other, facing outwards like a man waiting to step through a door, are four blocky mechanical figures the size of a house. And they’re not the only vehicles in there.

“Oh yes, four Model 14 ‘Steel Servant’ universal construction striders, and ... I’m not familiar with those models of cargo beetles, but there are a good few of them,” Asarin says, running her fingers along the dusty sides of the nearest strider. “I wonder why they left them behind. Maybe the doors failed and they couldn’t get them out.”

The striders are blocky things, and squat. Their hands are blunt claws, made for grabbing, not tearing, and they’re painted a dull white. Two of them look like they have shields - but no, they’re a kind of flat slab that you could use to demolish a building or push corpses into mass graves. The white and green insignia of the Otaran Military Biohazard Containment Division marks each of them. They don’t look fast, or graceful - but they do look strong. The pilot must sit in the chest, looking out at the world through the head which looks just like the armour of the soldiers they found a few carts back.

Meanwhile, the cargo beetles look sort of like a caravan, if a caravan had many mechanical legs. They’re in the same white and green, and Asarin sighs when she looks into the nearest one.

“They took the hearthstones. Or didn’t fuel them up. Or they decayed away,” she says sadly. “Curses.”

((Keris has basically found two forklifts, two bulldozers, and a number of military trucks.))  
((She is probably happier than she would have been if she'd found a tank.))  
((Yes. Yes she is. Much, much happier.))

“Makers,” Keris whispers in awe, staring at the treasure-trove of ancient technology. And she’d thought the red jade dragon armour was a haul! This... she shakes her head in awe. She’s going to have to work _really hard_ to keep as much of this as possible when the time comes to sort out who gets what. Hopefully there are less useful things that Asarin will want. Hopefully.

There’s little hope of that. Asarin’s eyes burn with her flame as she runs them over the striders. “Do you know what you can do with these?” she breathes, more to herself. But Keris can hear it. “Four more war striders will be ready. Some refitting. Demonic possession. Proper weapons...”

“Hey now, whoa,” Keris interjects. “We can decide who gets what after we’ve checked the whole thing. And who knows? Maybe there are more of these sitting in a bunker somewhere around here. No point in staking claims right now.”

Internally, she’s thinking ‘mine!’ Haneyl is that part of her. Keris knows that. But it’s deeply, deeply uncanny that she exhales “Mine!” in exactly the same tone of voice, exactly as Keris thinks it.

_“Later,”_ Keris emphasises, while making private plans to squirrel at least one of each type of machine away for study and possible replication. “Seriously, we’ll get nothing done if we start fighting now.” Because she’d win, and then have to deal with stowing everything away and stopping Asarin from trying to attack her in retaliation. “This is just a survey mission. Let’s get moving to the next carriage.”

But that’s the last of the treasure haul really. The next one along was also a vehicle carriage, but it’s a mess of twisted metal. And even before that, it was clearly emptier. And after that, the last troop carriage is even worse off, and the dragon head at the other end is... well, it’s gone. There are wheels there and a bit of a base, but it exploded.

There’s also an Eko there, but she’s dripping blood. None of it hers. 

Hi mama, she waves, flicking blood off her knife. The ground tried to eat her. Or maybe it was a mushroom. It’s dead now, anyway.

((goddamnit I keep on making ambush rolls and they keep on murdering them))

Keris arches her eyebrow. “Anything else interesting? Or... interesting at all?”

Oh, Eko perks up, Vali found a funny crossbow bolt and a crossbow in a house and tried to use it. It kind of hissed and then blew up in his hands. That was pretty funny! His hair was all blackened! And then he got really upset that it broke the weird X-shaped crossbow.

“Ah!” Keris yelps. “You should’ve told me! Is he okay?”

Eko shrugs. He was only a bit on fire and then rolled around in the dirt until it went out. But don’t worry, mama. Eko dodged the fire so it didn’t burn her dress.

That gets her an exasperated look, but Keris dips in and drops a kiss on Eko’s mask anyway. “Well done,” she says. “Now I’m going off to check he’s okay. Did you find anything that got flung off the crawler?”

Eko nods, pulling a piece of blue jade out of her pocket. It’s the size of a nail, and about as jagged. It’s stabby, Eko explains, stabbing the air.

“... well done,” Keris says. She supposes that answers what happened to the jade from the second dragon-head. She’ll have to set something to collecting them all, later. No point wasting good jade.

“Let’s go check on Vali, then,” she sighs. “Pack it up, girls! We’ve got more of this place to explore!”

* * *

The fires burn within Asarin’s walled encampments. Her demons patrol the walls, leaving sticky pools of brown flame when they clamber along the sides. Keris sits outside in the cool night air, a tired Kali in her arms. She’s taken her darling baby daughter out of the endless light for a bit just so everyone else can have a rest, and now she’s crashing.

Keris exhales and inhales, breathing to taste the clean air. The clean, cool, non-humid air. It’s lovely up here. It’s like Nexus as the city warms up from the coldest months, or the bits in Taira when the weather was most pleasant. Compared to the muggy, sticky, eternally hot Saata or the dry alien heat of Hell, it’s such a relief.

Rathan is out here, reading by his red light, with Oula comfortably snuggled up to him. She’s asleep, and her hair is hugging around his shoulders. He’s reciprocating.

“Deep thoughts, sweetheart?” she asks, stroking her baby girl’s hair gently. Kali is surprisingly peaceful when she’s exhausted herself. It’s a temporary thing, of course – halfway through the night she’ll have regained enough energy to start sleep-biting. But for now she’s a cute little boneless puddle on Keris’s lap, drifting in and out of half-awake doziness and light sleep.

“Mmm. You know, mama,” Rathan observes, licking his finger before turning the page again, “this is nice. It’s nice and quiet away from Saata, and the temperature is,” he fans himself, “well, pleasant. I can see why they built this place up here, long long ago.” He turns the page again, and Keris realises he’s looking through one of the ancient books they recovered from the train. The pages are this strange, smooth substance that water just rolls off of. “It’s funny to think no one has been here since... 

Rathan shrugs, spreading his hands in an almost Ekoan gesture. He’s barely coming up on four, he conveys. How does someone his age explain, think of, even _comprehend_ such a time gap as the almost eight centuries since the Shogunate fell?

“Well, no one’s been here since,” he says.

“We’ve been here,” Kali yawns.

“Yes, but apart from us.” He hugs Oula tighter. “We should take this slow, mama, don’t you think? This isn’t like Eshtock. We don’t need to get in and out and plunder things before the Lookshyians steal them. We should be... nice and considered. And make sure we get everything. Even if my baby sister is bitching on and on about me spending time in the temples in Saata, I think archaeology sounds very interesting. Digging things up slowly and making sure we found everything. Making records of everything.”

Keris frowns. Rathan has... a point. She doesn’t want to miss anything here, of all places - and a quick snatch-and-grab will guarantee she’ll miss things. But on the other hand, there’s _so much to do_ in Saata…

“What are you suggesting?” she asks cautiously, torn on the issue.

“Well, I think there’s really no need to rush.” He raises his hand. “Yes, yes, I know what you think. But we can take it slow. We should take care, maybe make sure all of us make lots of demons so we can stop the stupid faeries attacking us, and just... take it easy. While, of course, finding out everything we can.” He taps the book. “There’s so much about the Shogunate we don’t know. I don’t think we know enough to know what’s useful and what isn’t. And of course,” he smiles wryly, “Asarin is like Eko. She thinks the big, shiny things are the most interesting.”

“Shiny!” Kali chirps in. She sounds eager, and Keris cuddles her tighter to stop her trying to wander off looking for the shiny thing. In the state she’s in, she wouldn’t even get out of hair range before falling over.

“No, Little Sister, not here. More...” he gestures over towards the wall, in the direction of the train. “I don’t think we can build those trains. Not in years. So going on about how fascinating they are isn’t the whole of it. But if we know the little things - like, sigh,” he actually says ‘sigh’, “the recipes Haneyl is making a fuss about for those dry rations, we might be able to do things. I suppose what I’m saying is that I don’t think we know enough to know what’s important.”

“Well when you put it like that, it’s kind of depressing,” Keris says, her nose wrinkling in distaste. Have they really fallen that far?

Rathan’s pearly eyes gleam in the moonlight - his moonlight. “No!” he says, raising his voice. “No, it’s not! It’s... I’m reading this book, I think it’s a story that someone on the train was reading, and I’m realising how much about it I don’t understand. And in a way, it’s freeing. It’s eye-opening.

He catches his mother’s gaze.

“I don’t _have_ to act like I know everything worth knowing. Because this is proof that I don’t. So there’s really no point in _pretending_ otherwise.”

Keris feels the shift in the air. The pulse through her spine. The sudden, crashing wave of her son’s presence washing over her, cold and smooth and flowing; ice and mercury. His eyes gleam.

“Oh, my darling,” she says, realising what’s just happened. Her face creases with pride and sympathy. “Oh, _sweetheart_.”

The pressure has woken Oula up, and she’s rubbing cinnabar away from sleepy eyes. “What was that?” she mumbles.

“Sorcery,” Keris whispers reverently. “Rathan, sweetheart?” He’s staring at the sky, eyes wide. “Rathan,” she repeats. “Hey, come on. Look at me, darling. I know, I know what it’s like, just come back here and focus on Oula and me.”

He blinks. “Huh.” Meeting his mother’s eyes, he swallows, then glances over to his girlfriend.

Oula’s eyes are wide; her pupils heart-shaped. “Rat,” she exhales, “you’re amazing. Of course you’d be the second one to manage it.” She wraps her arms around him, and kisses him full on the lips.

When he comes up for air, he smiles goofily. “Well, I had you to explain how it was working with your first spells,” he says gently. “You’re incredible too.”

Nudging her off him, he holds both hands out - and two locks of hair, too. Gritting his teeth, he concentrates.

Between his hands, a soft, shapeless glow forms - red, but shot through with silver veins. The silver reaches out, writhing and twisting within the softer hue.

Keris’s heart bursts with pride, and she beams at her son. “You’ve woken your essence,” she says, “and see the world anew. When Oula gained this enlightenment, I gave her a new name - a sorceress’s name - to define who she was to her new art. And so I will with you, my son.”

It doesn’t come instantly. Not like naming her souls does. She has to think about it, consciously choose something to fit his kind of sorcery. The way he’ll shape the world with his will.

_**“Rathan Waisikir, I name you,”**_ she says, after a few moments spent in thought; Rathan holding that radiant ball of light in his hands, Oula staring at him with pride and adoration. _**“He who asks unthought-of questions, and pursues their answers beyond the distant stars.”**_

He purses his lips. “Waisikir,” he says, slowly, testing it on his tongue. “Hmm. Maybe I’ll grow into it.”

Oula kisses him again. “Well, you will. After all, you’re Aunty Keris’s _second_ disciple.”

“Do you need to emphasise it like that, babe?”

She considers it. “Yes. I think I do. It’ll keep you humble - and maybe it was that knowledge that I managed it before you, cutie pie, is what set you up for this. I love you dearly, but right now I’m a better sorceress than you and I intend to make you _work_ to get above me.”

“Oooh. Naughty.” 

She giggles as Rathan tickles her. “Not like that! That’s different!”

Rathan gives an extravagant sigh, adjusting his hair. “Of course, this means mama is going to expect me to do a lot more,” he says, shoulders dropping in mock sorrow. “It’s bad enough with Haneyl bitching that I’m not a greedy workaholic. Now... oh dear.”

“Oh dear, dear?”

“... she is _not_ going to be happy.” Rathan considers it. “And it’s going to be explosive. And hilarious.”

There’s a pause as Keris considers her seventh soul’s likely reactions to her slacker big brother gaining the secrets of sorcery before her.

Then she drops her head into her hands, and groans.

Oula rushes over to hug her shoulders. “It’s all right, Aunty,” she says fiercely. “At least it’s not Eko suddenly announcing she’s known for months and months and months and just hasn’t bothered telling us.”

“... how is that better?”

“Well, then I wouldn’t be your first disciple,” Oula says, sounding hurt.

Despite herself, Keris huffs a laugh. “Point,” she grants. “Well, alright then. Rathan? Since you’re a sorcerer now, we may as well start teaching you while we’re up.”

She stretches, hugs him, and smiles.

“What would you like to learn first?”


	8. Chapter 8

It is something of a relief to get back home to her mansion, even if she’s just taking Rathan and Atiya back for a brief stopover to look for some things and pick up some books to help him with his sorcerous study. Things have... things have got complicated up there. Very complicated. Haneyl might hate her - no, no, she doesn’t hate her, she’s just in a bad mood - and then there are her dreams.

Her wonderful, pleasurable, joyful dreams that Sirelmiya loves her for, but... they’re not simple dreams, okay? And then she has to tell Testolagh that she’s made her mind up and...

Things are complicated. Very complicated.

But her mansion is a beautiful place, which is quiet without her rambunctious brood around, and she’s glad to get Atiya out of the sun. Her baby girl doesn’t like the bright light much.

“So, mama,” Rathan says, stretching his legs and working his arms as he shakes out the stiffness from the ride. “What are we starting with first? How to twist dragon lines? How to gain power from sacrifice? How to call down rains of ice and arrows from the sky? How to banish whiny bitchy little sisters back into you?”

Keris grins at him. “None of that, no. Only an idiot charges into a fight with a sword and no armour. So before you learn how to cast any sorcery of your own, you’re going to learn how to break other people’s. And I need to work out how to generalise my summoning of single demons up to summoning groups of them. I’ve got some notes on it from Orabilis, I just, uh...”

She winces sheepishly. “... left them in my workroom and never got round to it,” she admits, more quietly. Rathan reassuringly lays his hand on her shoulder, and just for a moment he looks so like his father.

“Look, it’s fine, mama,” he soothes. “Not everything has to be done in a rush.”

She smiles at him gratefully, leaning in for a hug. “Thank you, darling. You’ve been wonderful this whole trip, you know that? I’m really proud of you.” She tugs him down to plant a kiss on his cheek. He just flaps his hand at her, cheeks slightly pink.

“Look, some of us have to behave,” he says. “I don’t know what’s gotten into Haneyl, but I don’t like it.” He lowers his voice. “Her teeth are sharp all the time, and I swear she’s showing scales on her legs and back sometimes.”

“I know,” Keris frowns. “And she said some... some pretty vile things to me the other- well, you probably heard.” She sighs. “I just wish I knew what’s gotten into her. Well, not that fight. I know what _that_ fight was about. But more generally. She never behaved like this last year.”

“Maybe not to you,” he mutters, slumping down on the comfiest seat inside out of the heat, fanning himself with his hand. “I can watch Atiya while you get us all drinks.”

She passes her baby girl over. Or... not-so-baby now. For all that the twins are leaps and bounds ahead; Atiya’s been growing up too. She’s nearly two, even if she’s months behind where she should be, and she’s been toddling for a while now. More shakily than Kali, yes, but she’s growing increasingly confident in it.

She still hasn’t spoken, though, and Keris is getting increasingly worried. It’s not that there’s nothing going on there - Atiya rules over a small legion of toys and oscillates between her favourites on a weekly basis, and the way she plays with them clearly has a narrative. She just hasn’t verbalised any of it, no matter how often Keris has tried to get her to.

If this was Kali, for instance, she would leap into Rathan’s arms and start loudly talking about... well, whatever was on her mind at the time. Her little feather has a very active inner life. If it was Ogin, he would probably just sit on top of his big brother happily, and perhaps talk about things if he felt like it. Ogin and Rathan seem to have an understanding that Keris doesn’t really get. Rathan just says it’s a boy thing, and after he heard that for the first time, Ogin just repeats it.

But Atiya, dressed in a light smock, just sits there on the cushions. She doesn’t look at Rathan’s face, but she does seem fascinated by trying to twist two bits of his hair together.

Keris sighs, and heads off to the kitchens. Where she finds Zanyi on a chair, trying to reach some of the top cupboards where Keris puts things like her expensive cooking rice wines in the desperate hope that Ogin won’t get up there. Lips quirking into a smile, she ghosts up behind her cousin, folds her arms, and waits for her to turn around after her pillaging of the cupboards. Honestly, she’s a little impressed. The doors are up where they’re only easily accessible for people with three-metre-long prehensile hair; right up next to the ceiling. Zanyi must have dragged a chair through from... Keris consults her mental map of the estate’s furniture... gods, probably the tiger lounge, to find a design she could stand on the back of to reach high enough.

“Oh! When did you get back?” Zanyi sounds remarkably unashamed when she glances back and catches sight of Keris, though unlike her nephew she does at least pause in her rummaging when caught.

“This is my first stop,” Keris tells her. “What was your plan for if you couldn’t reach even with the chair? And why are you raiding my rice wine in the first place?”

“Oh, is that what’s up there?” One of the problems with Zanyi is that it’s very hard to tell when she’s telling the truth and when she’s blatantly lying to your face. “I just was getting some fruit while I’m reading some books they tasked us with. And then I looked up and I wondered ‘what does Keris keep up there, when she’s even shorter than I am’.” She sniffs, smoothing down her jade-green gown. “I’m sort of disappointed. Rice wine is so boring~”

“It’s the kitchen!” Keris protests. “What else would I keep here, ancient Shogunate super-weapons? And they’re up there so Ogin can’t get at them.” She pauses, before correcting herself. “Is less likely to get at them, anyway. I really don’t want him trying them to see what they taste like. Which he would.” She sighs. Sometimes it’s a pain having such a curious son. “He gets it from your side of the family, you know,” she accuses.

“Look, if you don’t poke your nose into other people’s business, you won’t find out anything.” Zanyi jumps down, and offers half a mango to Keris as some kind of peace offering. “Especially not the juicy gossip. Now come on, what have you been up to in the highlands of Shuu Mua? I’m dying to know.”

“Well,” Keris smirks, accepting the fruit and leading them back out to Rathan and Atiya, “now I’m not sure I should tell you. Maybe I should keep you guessing!” She lets the threat hang in the air for a moment, before conceding to Zanyi’s wounded look.

“Alright, alright. We found an old Shogunate town that’s been half-eaten by the wyld. There’s a crashed heavy goods transport up there with a bunch of supplies on it - no weapons, or at least no decent ones, but stuff I can use to fix up the fields and the north and west wings if I get it working properly. It’s probably going to turn into an extended trip so we can be sure we’ve got everything.”

She scrunches up her nose. “Of course, that’s not to say there haven’t been a few problems as well. But... well, I can deal with most of them. Probably.”

Her cousin rests her hand on Keris’s shoulder, with one of the little smiles that Keris knows means trouble. “Well, little Keri,” she tells her, “you just need to talk to Big Sis Zanyi and I can help. After all, unlike you, I _am_ a married woman. Why don’t we get some wine and go to the cool indoor pool?”

“K- _Keri?”_ Keris sputters. “That’s... you can’t... that’s even worse than ‘Kiss’! You don’t even have shortening my name as an excuse! And I’m not _little!”_

Her face is betraying her; cheeks and ears burning. It’s kind of _nice_ to hear little pet names from someone she loves - o-or family, like this is! But like hell she’s going to admit that! Not to someone so... so gleefully teasing and smug!

“Keri, that was what you called yourself as a kid,” Zanyi points out. “‘Cause you couldn’t say the ‘-s’ sound.” She claps her hands together. “And you’re red and you have a fever. We need to go to the pool and drink wine. It’s an old village remedy.”

Keris sputters some more, and protests. But nonetheless, instead of ending up back in the south wing lounge with Rathan and Atiya, she finds herself in the dolphin pool, with its mural of frolicking bottlenoses spread across the bottom.

Somehow talked out of her destination, her clothes and two bottles of her expensive drinking wine - urgh, this is like being around Ney again - Keris sits on one of the curving underwater seats and pouts sulkily. Iris, on the other hand, happily surfaces before diving down to exhale a dolphin-shape of fire underwater. She headbutts it, and then wriggles onto Zanyi’s leg.

“I never get used to that,” Zanyi confesses, pouring herself a glass of wine. “So. Your problems. Tell me about them, adorable little cousin, and listen to the wisdom of your family’s matriarch.”

((Zanyi gets 6 successes of Keris-wrangling))

“Stealing the title by being older than me is cheating,” Keris informs her. “But... urgh, maybe you’ll have some advice. Haneyl is being _impossible_. She’s just... urgh! I don’t even know where to start with her! Ever since she came back from her trip around the South she’s been... been... been _lewd_ and _shameless_ and _arrogant_ and _brash_ and... argh!”

Her rant - which lasts for several minutes and touches on half a dozen different infuriating things Haneyl has done in the past few days alone, including their fight - leaves her feeling better, and she sinks back into the recessed seat and gulps down a half-glass of wine with the fumes of residual anger. “And it’s causing problems with everyone!” she complains. “Especially Asarin, who’s not used to her. I’m about ready to start banging heads together, but I’m pretty sure she’d use it as an opportunity to bite!”

Zanyi listens, eyes wide, as reflected light plays over her face. “Some of it, I think,” she says eventually, “is that she’s a teenage girl. She’s your daughter, but look at everything she’s been doing for you. The two of you don’t have the relationship where you’re her mother and she’s your baby girl anymore, but you haven’t settled down in a new relationship. I... I had similar problems with... with the people who were looking after me.” She looks Keris in the eye. “Part of the reason I married Ali as soon as I could was to get out of their household. They liked to remind me of what happened to girls with no family. And said _horrid_ things when they thought I was being lazy. But years later... I mean, I still didn’t like them, but we had a different relationship.

“And of course, she’s a demon on top of that. I can’t tell you what that means, but I think - from what you’ve said - she’s a part of you. Like, a bit of you that maybe you don’t like too much, that’s greedy and pushy and _does_ things that have to be done.” She sips her wine. “Were you ever like her?”

((Only 1 success on her roll to kindly placate Keris. And yes, Keris had no idea to date that Heba had been pulled into Haneyl’s… affairs.))

“... yeah,” Keris admits. “In a lot of ways she’s like I was before Dulmea; before I got a sense of caution. But less...” She takes another sip of wine and waves a hand vaguely. “Less spiteful and bitter. She never saw her village burned, she’s never been a slave. She never got scared or humbled as a kid. Which I’m glad about!” She hits the water lightly. “I’m really, really happy that all my babies grew up happy and safe and never afraid. But it’s still a difference between them and me. I don’t understand how she doesn’t seem to be _scared_ of things that she should be.”

“So, to put it another way,” Zanyi says, “maybe she’s what you would be more like if all those horrid things hadn’t happened to you.” She sighs. “Daughters do take after their mothers, after all.”

“Maybe,” Keris murmurs thoughtfully. Then frowns. “That still doesn’t explain why _this_ , though. I mean, she was fine last year, when she was running her counting house. Then she goes off to the south for a season and comes back all... all _tacky_.” Something occurs to her and she scowls. “Do you think they corrupted her down there?”

“Maybe, maybe,” and somehow Keris can tell her cousin is thinking ‘No’. “I mean, she always had quite... ahem, an appetite. And she and Rounen and Elly and Kuha and Heba and Mohin the gardener and... well, put it this way, she isn’t exactly subtle with her goings on. The old ladies in the village would have torn her to shreds. Well, okay, they would have tried, and she’d probably have been the one doing the tearing.

“... honestly that wouldn’t be the worst thing,” Zanyi blinks. “Sorry, got distracted. Where was I?” She smiles, that wicked sly smile Keris is a little too familiar with. “Then again, Keris, maybe it’s coming from you. Maybe she’s picking it up from you. I mean, your bathroom isn’t exactly a model of discrete style. It sort of rubs its nature in your face.”

_“You found that?”_ Keris whisper-shrieks. “That’s a _private_ place, Zanyi!” And gods, is she suddenly glad she had the foresight to build Love Unchained in a completely different structure that’s on the other side of the estate and shielded from suspicion and is very hard to get into for people who aren’t Exalted. And which also looks like a boring old abandoned perimeter fortification that’s half-ruined and never used for anything.

That’s probably - just barely - enough to keep Zanyi’s insatiable curiosity away from it.

Zanyi shrugs. “Keris, my sweet cousin, I was curious as to where all the water pipes were going. I spent some time following where the water tanks on the roof led to. Then I got Ali to take the hinges off when I found that place and couldn’t open the door.”

Inarticulate noises come out of Keris’s mouth, and her hair waves speechlessly. Her cousin just gives her a knowing look. “It’s a very romantic place,” she says, waggling her eyebrows and raising her wineglass. She giggles. “Honestly, I think I’m pregnant again. I’ve only missed one, but the timing sort of lines up.”

There’s a short silence, which Keris spends twitching.

Then she slumps with an exasperated sigh. “At least tell me you cleaned up after yourself?” she begs. “And... _Heba?_ I didn’t know anything about that.” She pauses. “Does she seem happy with it? No details!”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Zanyi raises her hand, “we even made sure the towels were put out to be collected. And I promise, I didn’t take any of the... very interestingly wide jewellery collection I found. But that’s why I think you have more in common with Haneyl than you perhaps want to admit.” She pauses. “And honestly, from what I’ve been able to pick up, Heba has more of a thing for Mohin. It’s just that... well, Kuha happened to mention that Heba had gone to Haneyl for romance advice and... advice on what to do with the physical side of things and one thing led to another...”

Keris groans again. Then looks up sharply. “Wait, I keep my jewellery drawers fused to the desk! How did you get into them? The only other one who can unlock- _urgh._ Haneyl! This! This is what I’m talking about! She must’ve raided my bathroom before we left! Did she even bother locking the drawer again?”

“Look, at this point we both know the answer is ‘no’,” Zanyi says with a shrug. “So there’s really no point in asking it. Don’t worry, I asked Ali to step outside while I looked through your drawers just to make sure he didn’t have to see any of his sister’s ‘ladies’ material’.” She pats Keris’s arm. “Good thing, too.”

“... yes,” Keris blushes. “I don’t... use them often! It’s just, I got a lot of presents last time I was in Hell, and some of them were... and, you know, I wanted to see if I could do better than... and _why_ am I telling you this, gods!” She hides her crimson face in her hands and downs another half glass of wine, whimpering.

Zanyi perks up. “Ah ha! So that’s what was in the _other_ drawer; the one that I couldn’t open. See, Keri, honesty is good for the soul.” She pauses, sips her wine, then sets it aside. “And Keri. I think the final way that Haneyl is perhaps more like you than you think is... well, do you think this might have been kicked off by how you’re having an affair with Aiko’s father?”

“...” says Keris, which after a second she realises is almost more of a give-away than yelling would have been.

“... how did you figure it out?” she asks after a moment of careful thought. “And it’s not an affair. Technically.”

“I mean, I had my suspicions from how he acted around you sometimes,” Zanyi says. She’s not smiling so much. “But... ah, how to put it. A few times, the two of you were making quite a bit of noise. And you might have been doing it in another wing of the house, but I like to go for night time walks. It’s cooler. I didn’t want to say anything, but... you are playing a dangerous game. And a cruel one, to sleep with someone else’s husband.”

There’s another awkward silence.

“So, uh...” Keris says at a slightly higher pitch. “How to put this. Um. Aiko’s mother is Sasi - who is also Haneyl and Vali’s mother; you remember her from my pictures. She and Testolagh aren’t, uh, married to each other. Testolagh isn’t actually married at all; he’s a widower. And it was, um, actually Sasi’s idea that we should start sleeping together, and I was doing it mostly to see if I could get along with him to make her happy.”

Zanyi lets out a sigh. It sounds relieved. “Well, that’s better, at least,” she admits. “But suns, Keri - your love life is a disaster. No wonder Haneyl acts like she does. If she’s learned from you and Sasi, no wonder she doesn’t want a stable relationship and has that web of shameless bedmates. You didn’t say that _Sasi_ isn’t married, too.”

It’s not entirely a pleasant feeling, to be judged like this by her cousin - who she likes and maybe even looks up to. It’s a reminder that Zanyira _is_ still a rural peasant from a farming village.

“... Sasi had to run away from her family,” Keris says sadly, her shoulders falling. “She’s Realm. They’d’ve killed her if they knew she’d Exalted. She has a whole family she’ll never get to see again. I don’t blame her for trying to find love where she can.”

She rubs the back of her head. “And as for Testolagh... like I said, Sasi really loves him. I was trying to see if I could get along with him too, so it could just be the three of us all stable and stuff, and... well, short answer; it can’t. I already decided to break it off with him.” A light blush touches her cheeks again at the thought of what she’d done _after_ that decision.

Running her fingers along her eyebrows, Zanyi shakes her head. “I think you’re going to have to talk to Haneyl, then. You two are clearly alike, but I think what’s coming up is that she’s young and brash and still a child in some ways. You think she’s being too incautious, but maybe part of what’s annoying you is you can see the temptation of what she’s doing. And maybe... maybe you’re just going to have to let her make her mistakes, but then be there to support her and tell her you love her and keep her safe when she does muck up. After all, has anything bad ever really happened to her? Has she ever made any of the big mistakes you think she needs to avoid?”

“Not _yet,”_ Keris says darkly. “It’s a learning experience I’d really rather spare her.”

“Well, then, if nothing’s ever gone wrong for her acting like she does, maybe that’s why she sees no problem with it?”

Keris pauses at that. Considers it.

Wrinkles her nose in annoyance.

“I don’t like how much sense that makes,” she grumbles. “Gimme the bottle, I need more wine.”

One refill and a few more sips later, she relaxes back and nods. “Okay, fine. That helps with Haneyl. I still have to sort out ending it with Testolagh, but... well, that can wait. Thank you, I guess. For helping.”

“Well, Keri, that’s what happens when you go see your wise old family matriarch for advice,” Zanyi says, a dignified attitude that’s only slightly ruined by her flicking water at Keris. “How long are you going to be back for?”

Sticking her tongue out and blowing a raspberry at the ‘wise old family matriarch’, Keris splashes her back. “I’m not sure yet. Not long. I’m just here to sort out a few things that a longer trip will need - like arrangements for Shining Foam - and getting some materials.”

“Well, Hany and Ali and Xasan will love to see you,” she says. “You should stay for a day or two, maybe for dinner, too. I’m heading back to the college soon-ish, once the festival is over. We should spend some time as a family.”

“Oh, yeah,” Keris agrees. “I’ll be staying that long for sure.” She stretches, and gives a warning whistle as Iris gets bored with exploring Zanyi and flows from her ankle onto the floor of the baths. “Iris,” Keris warns. “No eating the dolphins, you hear me? Not even a nibble.”

She gets a pouting face of rainbow-flame in response, and resolves to keep an eye on her familiar.

“How are they, anyway?” she asks. “You’ve been doing well in your big clever temple studies, of course - I dare not question my obnoxiously smart family matriarch. But Xasan and Ali and Hany? Is my niece fed up with learning about bellows and the importance of nails yet?”

“I think she’s more interested in chasing butterflies,” Zanyi admits.

“Well, it happens,” Keris says cheerfully. “Wait until you have to wrangle two of them at once. Do you want me to check, by the way? I can’t hear a second heartbeat, so if you’re right it’s early days still.”

Zanyi purses her lips. “You might as well,” she says. She swallows. “I... at the very least, you can make sure none of my babies have the same thing I had, right?”

“Can and will,” Keris confirms, shifting over. It’s easy enough to slip a root-tendril in and taste her cousin’s blood - pregnancy is hard to miss. She could probably do it with just sweat, though this way is more reliable. And ah yes, there it is - it’s early days, but the taste is unmistakable. There’s no sign in her external appearance yet, but why would there be? It’s probably smaller than a fingernail at this point.

Keris frowns, and shifts her fingers into her cousin’s abdomen, squirming in to find the tiny thing within her. Hair fine roots slip into the sac, tasting the fluid within.

The tiny thing, the living rice-grain, is a boy.

“Hello,” she smiles goofily. “Hi there, little baby! Welcome to the family. You’re gonna be up inside your mama for another seven or eight months, so get lots of rest and grow up big and strong.”

She glances up at Zanyi. “They seem healthy, though they’re not big enough for any checking of their heart yet. Do you want to know the gender?”

“I think we’ll leave that up to the...” Zanyi trails off. “I suppose... well, whatever they’ve done, the gods have already made up their minds. They must have, if you can already tell whether they’re a boy or girl.” She considers it. “Oh, you know me. I’m all about those secrets. Tell me, but don’t tell Ali. I want to surprise him.”

“Hany will be having a baby brother,” Keris tells her with a beaming smile, and hugs her delightedly. “Oh! I’m so happy for you! Just... never tell me any details of how he got conceived, okay? Ever.” She cringes.

“Look, Keri,” Zanyi laughs, clearly trying to cover up the fact she’s crying with happiness, “do you really think I can pin down just one day? Even with me at college, now that I’m well again we’ve been managing it more than I ever did when I was sick. The only surprise is that it took so long.” Her tears are lost in the water. “I nearly lost everything. I was... I was so sure I was going to leave a widower and a motherless daughter. Then you came along, saved my life, and got me away from that awful village to a much larger, much better family. My son is... is going to be born and he’d never have existed without you, because having Hany nearly killed me. If it’d been a girl, we’d have probably called her Keris just because of everything you did.”

Keris blushes, and hugs harder. “You’re kin and clan,” she murmurs happily. “And there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my family. I’m glad to have you as my cousin, Zanyi. And I’m really glad I found you in time to help.”

* * *

“Well, _finally_ ,” Rathan says when Keris returns. “What happened to you? I nearly died of thirst.”

For all his protests, he’s actually gone and got drinks himself, and has actually been a responsible big brother and given Atiya some plain boiled rice to eat with her fingers. She’s fascinated by the rice, and is eating it grain by grain with her finger tips. 

It’s very, very unlike Kali, who would probably have mashed her face up to the bowl and covered her face with it. It vaguely niggles at Keris, and she watches her daughter for a while until she realises what it’s reminding her of.

Noh. The Contrary One is known - insofar as she has any consistent habits - to enjoy plain rice as her favoured food of choice.

Maybe, Keris thinks with a worried lurch, Atiya picked up more than just her pitch-black hair from her Hellish blessing.

“... s-sorry,” she replied. “Zanyi, uh, sort of hijacked me in the kitchens. And then dragged me off to the baths for some girl time.” The dread words of Rathan-warding are ever a reliable way of convincing him to lose interest.

“Oh, well, she’s family,” he says, waving that aside. “Come on, come on. Let’s go to the sorcery room so I can learn to call down thunderbolts!”

His smile is winsome, and makes it very hard to remember she’d already told him he was studying countermagic first.

“Alright, alright.” She hefts Atiya up on her hip; a hair-tendril keeping the bowl within her reach, and leads the way up to the room where Ogin and Zanyi had found her to tell her of Pale Branch’s call for aid. A quick glance around tells her that this room, at least, hasn’t been disturbed. Evidently Zanyi hasn’t found a way around the wardings on the door - and this one opens inwards; so there are no accessible hinges for Ali to remove.

Handing Atiya to Rathan, she hastily tidies up certain things he shouldn’t see, then takes her daughter back and puts her down in the big comfy armchair that’s Keris’s occasional dozing place. It smells like Keris, and it’s soft enough that Atiya basically curls up and goes to sleep on the over-padded cushions. Iris leaps off Keris’s arm, and like the family cat curls up to Atiya.

“Good girl,” Keris whispers to her, with a kiss to her temple. She should probably give Atiya a full check-up while she’s here; just in case. “Now then! Where’d I leave my notes... Rounen organised them for me, so they’ll be labelled...”

Unfortunately, it’s still a bit of a tip in here. Keris has to hunt through several piles of looseleaf that she’s scribbled on and not gotten around to giving Rounen or Rala for organisation. The collections of simpler spells she’s accumulated as research materials are fairly easy to find. They’re underneath one of the copies of a book on manse construction she found at the Daimyo and Yellow and actually paid for. Urgh. That had been a mistake. It had been mostly nonsense, so she’d gone and stolen her money back.

It takes longer to find the notes from Orabilis’s libraries, and Keris eventually locates them in the last place anyone would expect; in the box labelled “Uncategorised Sorcerous Materials”, when she had _left_ them in a convenient working pile on her desk. Urgh! That had to be Rala. Rounen knows that while he’s allowed to sort the desk, all things on the desk must remain on the desk when sorted.

She makes a note to address the issue with her secretary - and, uh, leaves it loose on the desk for later - but holds her prize aloft triumphantly, and turns around to find Rathan three pages deep in the materials she’d stolen from Eshtock, making notes on... she squints... yes, that looks like the ‘Mela’s Breath’ weather control spell for summoning icy blizzards.

“Ah buh buh buh!” she scolds, snatching it away. “I said countermagic first and I _meant_ countermagic first! No cheating! You can learn how to smash places with sudden snowstorms after you learn how to turn them off when you’re done with them.”

“But mama...” His pearly eyes wobble with tears.

She puts her hands on her hips. “I’m sure my _brilliant, clever_ son will be able to master spell-breaking really quickly, and then move onto whatever catches his interest,” she says. “But I’m your tutor and so you do things my way, okay?”

“But it’s so hot!” That’s the last protest though, and he reluctantly (but actually not entirely reluctantly) accepts the tome from Keris. “Oh, by the way, does that mean I get some beautiful ancient sorcerer’s weapon or ring or something for my birthday?” he asks, after she explains that she’ll be teaching him a way to destroy a spell with the power focussed down through a weapon.

“If I can find one,” she mutters. The one downside of training new sorcerers, Keris is finding, is that it’s _really expensive_. Just anchoring all her babies in Creation has taken an eye-watering number of artifacts, and she had to dig through her po’s hoard for the black lightning sword that Oula carries. “I’ll see what I can find,” she promises. “But I may have to go out artifact-hunting to get you a signature weapon.” She smirks, motioning to the long moonsilver blade slung over his back that keeps Creation from rejecting him. “That one’s still a bit too big for you, huh?”

“It’s not very convenient,” he admits. “And Oula keeps on stealing it to practice with.”

“Poor you,” Keris soothes sympathetically. “So. For the moment you can use your sword to practice with, until we find you a better weapon. I’ll just be sending Iris to you with a message, and we can practice downstairs in the cellars where we won’t get much attention. Don’t expect to succeed on your first go - it’ll take you a week or two. And, uh.”

She lowers her voice. “If you could help smooth over any _other_ reactions like Haneyl’s to your new skill, that would help a lot,” she murmurs very quietly, referring to their _other_ resident demon lord. Hermione probably won’t take Rathan’s sorcerous awakening any better than Haneyl did, if left to her own envious nature.

“I mean, I can still use the sword,” he says. “But I might have to keep it sheathed and use it as a staff.” He shrugs. “And she’s been very well behaved recently, so she’s probably up to something. That, or she’s been exploring those tunnels of the old buildings.” He pauses. “... actually, would those have mirrors in them?”

“I don’t...” Keris starts, and then pauses. “... actually... oh. If any of them are flooded? Yeah. They will. You’re right, she’s probably out exploring.”

A clap. “Well then! In that case, let’s go have your first live practice!”

* * *

He doesn’t have the hang of things yet. Keris wasn’t expecting it, but she’s exhausted herself from demonstrating the spell to try to get him used to the tingle-feeling of incoming sorcery, and so she decides to instead go spend a relaxing afternoon with her family.

She finds Xasan and Ali by one of her rivers, with fishing rods and big straw hats. Hany wades in the shallows, dress rolled up to her waist with a net. She isn’t catching anything, but she’s getting wet and having fun doing it. Sitting out with a tired groan, Keris leans on Ali’s shoulder. “Hi, big brother,” she murmurs. “Havin’ fun?”

“Ach!” Ali flinches. “When did you get back?”

Xasan, for his part, laughs a great belly-shaking laugh. “So you’re back from the mountains, Keris. And baby Atiya too!”

Atiya is still sleepy in the heat, but is content to rest on Keris’s shoulder and there’s shade out here, under the canopy.

“Not back for long,” she murmurs. “Foun’ more in the’mountains than we thought we would. Had’ta come back’n arrange stuff t’stay up there longer’n get everythin’.” She stretches an arm about halfway around Ali’s shoulders for a hug. “Zanyi already cornered me in the baths an’ grilled me.” Craning back gets her a good look at Xasan, and she smiles tiredly. “Hi uncle.”

“You coming fishing, Keris?” he asks. “Ah, I’m glad I didn’t have to walk up there again. I’m an old man, niece. Climbing up mountains is a young man’s game - even if it’d get me out of this heat.”

Ali seems about to say something, but then his line jerks and he’s rather busier trying to pull in a fish. His line gives way and he mutters a curse. “It’s that big one again,” he says.

“Ah, well, told you you wouldn’t have any more luck than me,” Xasan says back. “He’s a wily one. I wonder if the ones who lived here before hooked him in the mouth.”

“I’ll try my hair at it,” Keris grins, letting a lock drift out to land in the shallows of the river. “How’ve you two been? Is Hany doing well learning smithing?”

“Hany!” Ali calls. “Come see Aunty Keris and tell her how you’re doing!”

“Aunty Keris!” That brings her niece rushing over. It’s a reminder of how much she’s grown up since she met her for the first time. She’s now an independent little girl, with a fondness for catching bugs and fish. Her skin tone is a few shades lighter than Keris’s own and she has the same brown hair she had as a child - and more than that, she has the same grey eyes that everyone in her immediate family from the Tairan side, apart from Zanyi, has. 

When she beams at Keris, one of her front teeth is missing.

“Hi, aunty! So, Daddy’s been teaching me about all the forge tricks and things like that and he’s been teaching me about the forge spirits and learning their names and he says I still have a lot to learn before I can learn how to see them like he can but I’m going to have to do it someday. And,” she puffs out her cheeks. “He has me cleaning the forge! And making nails! Nails, aunty Keris! Nails! They’re only the most boring thing ever!”

“People get through a lot of nails,” Ali says, with a grin. “And she’s not really making them. Just hammering some heads.”

Keris is blinking, a little unsettled for a moment at how much little Hany looks like... well, like her. Hanilyia is five now; the same age Keris had been when Baisha had been lost. And the face staring up at Keris is almost a dead ringer for the face Keris had seen in the mirrors she polished at one of Makoa Kasseni’s Nexan residences.

The biggest difference isn’t the skin tone. It’s the fact that this child is happy, and not full of hate and spite and bitterness.

“That...” she stutters, swallowing. “That sounds like really hard work, sweetheart. But you should listen to your papa, you know. Nails are nails, but enough nails and you get to move onto the fun stuff.”

Hany puffs her cheeks out at that. “Bleargh,” she says. “So where’s everyone else?” She jabs her finger at her father. “He’s making me do more things because I can’t say I’m watching the babies!”

Keris grins. “Atiya is in the south wing with your cousin Rathan. But everyone else is still waaaaaay up in the mountains on the mainland. We found a bunch of stuff up there,” she winks. “So I had to come back and get some stuff for us to get full use out of it all.”

“Oh.” Hany doesn’t sound very interested, and drifts off back to the shallows to harass the fish with her net.

Xasan gets up and stretches. “I’m going to grab more beer,” he says. “You want anything else?”

“Uh... bring some bread, I guess,” Ali says. “Keris?”

“Uh... if you look in the...” she thinks for a moment, “... the Otter viewing room in the south wing; the one with the whole wall of floor-to-ceiling windows? There should be a couple of bottles of apple cordial in one of the top-shelf cupboards near the door. Could you bring one? Assuming Zanyi hasn’t pilfered it while I’ve been gone.”

“Oh, nice. Yeah, I’ll be back.” Xasan hefts his bucket of water with several fish in it, and heads slowly off. 

Ali, for his part, settles down in his canvas chair while Keris takes Xasan’s emptied one. Her brother is looking better. Healthier. And while the grey at his temples is still there, it hasn’t grown. “So how are things up in the mountains?” he asks. “You mentioned you were poking around some old ruins. Are they safe?”

And there’s the difference between brother and sister. Immediately, he’s the one wondering if something is safe.

“They’re near the wyldshore,” Keris admits. “But I only took Eko, Haneyl, Calesco and Vali with me to explore the bit near there. I’m not even sure what attacked the girls; it got smeared all over the landscape before I found out it had happened. The worst injury that’s happened was Calesco getting a stick caught in her feathers and pulling one out getting it loose.”

She doesn’t mention the fight with Haneyl. It would only worry him. Instead, she pats his arm reassuringly. “We’re safe up there. I took a force that could wipe the whole wyld zone from existence if I needed to. We’re just focusing more on recovering stuff from the city and mapping out where everything is at the moment. It’s nice, actually. Cool and not as humid - a bit like mid-Earth in Nexus. Maybe... late Water in Baisha?”

He wipes his brow. “That... that sounds nice. The weather is the one awful thing here.”

Keris bumps her head on his shoulder gently. “It took me a lot of getting used to as well. Maybe once we’ve made the city safe and built up some stuff there and gotten a little settlement going and banished the wyld, you could come see if you like it?”

“... I think no wyld is very important,” he says. And there he is, jumpy again. There’s a little bit of Keris that wonders what her brother’s souls would be like - or maybe whether she could transplant some of his nervousness to Haneyl. “How are things going, though? Everything OK? No problems?”

She seesaws her hand. “Haneyl is being... Haneyl, but I already talked to Zanyi about that. I do... kind of have a problem, though. One I could use your advice on.”

“I mean, I’m... hoping that means it’s related to iron?” he tries, as he attaches more cord to his fishing line and sets the bait again.

“... more just general big brother advice,” Keris says. “If you’re willing to help your little sister out with your hard-earned wisdom?” She grins nervously.

“Oh.” He casts out the line. “Is it about the twins and small children?”

“Noooot exactly,” Keris says, and decides to cut to the chase. “Um, so, you remember how I told you what happened in Malra with... with mama. And specifically how it involved that other empty-circle; Ney Adami?”

“Mmm hmm.” Ali blinks. “Wait. Has he followed you here? Are we going to have to move again?”

“No, no, no,” Keris reassures him. “I pointed him in the wrong direction when I left - which he’ll have seen through, but still doesn’t get him anything more than ‘not south’ at first and then a trail that cuts off at an abandoned temple if he finds and follows it. And that was two years ago, so if he’d managed to work out where I was he’d have shown up by now. But, um...”

She chuckles sheepishly. “I may have... kind of... sort of...”

Her sentence trails off into mumbling. Ali blinks.

“I didn’t quite hear that,” he says. “Did you just say something about dreams? You’re dreaming about him?”

“More... he’s dreaming about me,” mutters Keris. “Because I invaded his dreams. And made him chase me all through a dream version of Nexus. And gloated at him a lot. Only then he was all annoying and charming and wasn’t angry at me for making him look like an idiot when I left. And we, uh...”

She blushes.

“... and I think I have feelings,” she finishes in a whisper, looking down. “Like... _feelings_ feelings. Of the feeling-y kind.”

“Oh. Um. Oh.” Ali turns pink, and looks hopefully down at the clay jug the men had been drinking small beer from. Keris can hear it’s empty. “Oh. Maybe we should wait for Xasan to get back with those drinks,” he says. “I’m going to need them.”

She nods, still blushing faintly. Something finally nibbles on her hair, and she snares it with a quick rush of tendrils, landing a trout on the smallish side of medium-size.

“So. Um. I don’t even know how to do this. Dream relationships are... not in my ballpark.”

“I know, but if it were, um. If it were just that it’d be easy. I could just see him in dreams and not have to worry so much about, you know, rivals and missions and stuff because we’re on opposite sides of Creation and... I could live with that. That would be fine. The issue is that... uh...”

She bites her lip, and then - quietly so Hany doesn’t hear - spills a rough summary of the triangle between her, Sasi and Testolagh. She tries to make it sound a bit less judgementable than when Zanyi had worked it out, at least - without the stuff about Sasi being married, and making it sound more like an attempt at an unusual but stable three-person thing.

“... but it’s not working,” she finishes. “I mean, I tried, for Sasi. But I just don’t like him very much. And Ney is... urgh, aggravating and nosy and too smart for their own good. But also charming and sweet and... surprisingly respectful, honestly. I think I can trust Ney - with my heart, even if not with my beltpurse. With Testolagh it’s the other way around.”

Ali’s head is in his hands. “Oh. Oh gods. Keris, I... this is so far outside my... I don’t... this...” He trails away. “Um. Um. So... I mean, your thing with Sasi. She’s not... jealous? It’s all so... strange. Back in Baisha, a man wound up dead because... well, everyone knew he had a girl on the side as well as his wife, but the wife knew too and... well. It was a mess.”

“Me and Testolagh was her idea. She... uh, without going into detail; she lost her old family when she Exalted. Now she loves Testolagh and she loves me, and she doesn’t want to lose either of us, so... I guess this was her trying to find a way she didn’t have to.” She bites her lip. “I don’t blame her”, she half-lies. “I don’t think I could take losing my family twice, if it were me.”

“Uh. Okay. Okay.” He covers his eyes. “So. Um. Your. Your situation is that you have a... a long term girlfriend who you have two children with and... you’re raising her child. And you want to also pursue a... a dream relationship with a man.”

“... yeah,” Keris winces. “It... sounds worse when you put it like that. Oh, and, um, I also have to end things with the man I’m currently... sort of seeing. Who is the father of her child. And this is just making it sound worse, isn’t it?”

There’s a pause that Keris recognises. It’s the pause she has whenever some lagging detail of a big complicated thing she’s been told catches up after a minute or two of processing and slams into the back of her head like a goremaul. Ali’s hands come down. He stares at Keris.

“Wait,” he says, something starting to emerge from the mortified numbness. Keris recognises that, too. Apparently she’s not the only one who cringes when sex and family cross paths. “Go back a moment,” Ali continues. “You’re _sleeping with Testolagh?”_ He’s hissing by the end of the question, and doesn’t really look like he wants an answer. “I... this...”

“Sorry!” She flinches back - a woman who has slain yidak lords and chaos princes and demons of the second circle; cowering away from the words of a mortal man. “It... like I said, it was Sasi’s idea, and I just... she was split between him and me because she loved us both and I didn’t want her to... she said we could just be a triad if me and him could get along, so I tried...”

She gulps, trembling. “Please don’t be mad? I... I decided it wasn’t working, l-like I said.”

“No, no, no.” Ali waves his palms at her, bright red. “I... this is just a lot to take in! And you’re a big city girl and they clearly do things differently in the big city. I just... I’m surprised.” He wipes his brow. “I got on with him when he was living here. He... didn’t seem like the sort. Stick up his arse so deep it’s coming out his mouth.”

“You have no idea,” mutters Keris, turning bright red as she remembers exactly what she’s done involving sticks and Testolagh’s arse. Ali notices, but clearly decides against asking, for which Keris is thoroughly and profoundly grateful. She cautiously relaxes again, leaning back against him. “And yeah, he... took a lot of talking into it. That’s why it’s not working out, really. He’s too stiff and he doesn’t really... approve of me. He has standards of honour that I don’t meet. And don’t want to meet, really. Honestly, I don’t entirely understand how he’s with Sasi. She’s no more fond of fair play against people trying to kill her than I am.”

“So. Um.” Her brother shifts uncomfortably. “So, uh. If you’re... if you’re going ahead with this idea, I suppose... well, it isn’t his business if you’re breaking it up with him and nothing more is going to happen between the two of you?”

“I mean, in theory, yes...” Keris says, shifting. “But, urgh, he’s working for me in the southwest and helping kick the Zu Tak out and deal with their undead backers, and he’s also looking after Aiko two seasons of five, and then there’s Sasi to think about... I’m just not sure what’s going to happen if I tell him ‘I’m ending it’ and he takes it badly. It might muck up everything.”

She hugs herself nervously. What she’s built here, this home... it’s beautiful, and it looks grand and impressive. But she’s aware it’s also still very fragile. The thought of shattering it is terrifying.

“He’s a powerful man, and powerful man like being told what they want to hear in the way they’d do it,” Ali says. He frowns. “You can’t tell him what he wants to hear, but maybe you can re-frame it in the way he would do it. That you were hoping you’d love him, but it’s not working out and you can’t keep lying and it would be dishonourable to... uh. Do whatever it is you two do together.”

“We don’t have to talk about that bit,” Keris squeaks, for the benefit of both of them. Yeah, Ali is _very much_ like her when it comes to the topics of family members and sex. “I... guess I could. I mean, if I make him think it’s his idea, he might still sulk, but he won’t... I dunno, blow anything up.”

She ponders that for a while, and sighs. “I’m still scared, though. I don’t want Sasi to be upset with me. She was really hoping we could get along and all be happy together.”

Ali crosses his arms, leaning back in his chair. “I think both of you have been thinking too much about what she wants,” he says, then winces. “I mean, I didn’t mean it like that. But... it seems the two of you were... having an affair, only is it an affair when... never mind. Neither of you really wanted to do it, but you were doing it to make her happy. You should have told her ‘No’ in the first place. She... look, I know you’re a servant of Hell and all that, but the temples would say she didn’t have the right to ask that of you in the first place.”

Keris bites her lip, wavering. “I... I can see your point,” she murmurs. “I dunno if I agree or not, but... well, I did say no at first. It took her a while to convince me to give it a try.”

She watches Hany splash around in the shallows for a while, and leans her head back on Ali’s shoulder.

“Thank you, big brother,” she says. “I’m still scared, but... I feel a bit better now.”

“Now,” he says. “Are you going to tell her about the Jackal?”

“No,” replies Keris instantly. “Or at least, not yet. Sasi’s scared of Solars. Really, really scared. More scared than I am, and I nearly pushed him off a tower the first time I saw him, then ran for it and spent a whole day working out how to hide things from him, then nearly gutted him on terrified reflex later on when it didn’t work. If she found out I was even on speaking terms with a sun-chosen, she’d have a full-blown panic-fuelled breakdown.”

He jerks his fishing rod around sadly. “Then all you’ve really done is change the men in your affections,” he says. “Keris... is this your choice? To live like this? Does this make you happy, or is this some dark thing Hell asks of you?”

She thinks about it.

“Testolagh... makes me a person I don’t like being,” she says after a while. “Someone spiteful and mean, who doesn’t like him because... because of jealousy and envy and because I resent the standards he judges me for not living up to. Someone who takes it out on him in ways that he might like, but... well, I probably shouldn’t tell you about. Ney’s not like that.”

She shades her eyes and looks up at the afternoon sun meditatively. “Ney’s... laughter, and fun, and getting to be angry in a way that’s sort of real but mostly pretend and doesn’t lead to anyone getting hurt or holding grudges. When I’m with Ney, I’m not lying and stealing for Hell, I’m just playing tricks and games against another empty circle who’s as good as me, for nothing except bragging rights and gloating and smugness when I win.

“And... and Ney doesn’t judge me. For anything, really. He doesn’t mind that I lie and hide things - he likes puzzling me out himself. He doesn’t hate me or retaliate when I get mad at him, and he tries to respect the places I’m... not so okay. The only time he poked one of my sore spots, it was by accident, and he promised to never do it again. He knows I work for Hell as a mercenary, and he’s not... _happy_ about it. But he’s a mercenary too. He understands the difference between clan stuff and coin-hire. He knows I’m not as loyal to them as I pretend to be.”

She looks over at her brother and shrugs helplessly. “He _trusts_ me, Ali. Trusts in my better nature, at least. How’m I meant to not trust him back?”

He chuckles. It’s a weak, wet noise, but it’s there. “Yeah. I guess Hell wouldn’t be happy to know you’re burning a candle for the Jackal of Malra. Honestly, that... makes me feel better about it.”

She smiles. “Keep it a secret, though,” she says. “We don’t want them finding out.”

“Oh, no no no.” He gives her a cuddle. “Keris, you’re kind of a disaster when it comes to love, despite all your power. I might just be a mortal man, but I grew up with the love of my life. I’ve never really know loving anyone else in that way.”

“I’m not a disaster!” Keris protests. “... am I?”

That earns her a nudge in the ribs. “By how many people have you had children by?” her brother asks pointedly.

“... shut up,” she mutters. “Also, I think your daughter has cornered that big catfish you were after.”

“Wait, what?” Ali says, turning to where, yes, Hany’s splashing around in the shallows is accompanied by a great deal more splashing from something very big and slippery that she’s blockaded from getting back to the deeper parts of the river.

Keris leaves him to it, and escapes any more teasing while he’s distracted trying to help his daughter catch his sworn fishy enemy. Now seems like a good time to go see what’s taking Xasan so long with the apple cordial.

* * *

Keris spends most of the next day in the library, helping Rathan with his study while putting together her notes from Orabilis’s library herself.

It’s not like most of the spells she studies. It’s a rubbing of one of his glass books, and the principles aren’t ones she normally uses. This is what the Immaculates would call Infernalism - the kind of magic Sasimana does. It’s as much an act of worship as it is a spell; it’s cast through dark rituals which honour the demon who lends the supplicant their serfs. The way it’s designed, each demon needs their own act of worship. It’s not quite a full ritual, but it’s not something that can trivially be cross-applied. And dragons and gods, if someone who doesn’t know what she is catches her casting this spell, they’ll know more than she’d like.

She muses on her allies in the demon realm thoughtfully as she studies it, considering who might lend her serfs to summon via this method. Asarin, certainly. Probably Lelabet as well, and perhaps Berengiere - perhaps. Or... well, looking at more powerful sources, certainly Ligier and the Shashalme might grant her leave to summon their lessers. Though in the latter case she might not enjoy the cost... perhaps Yuula, or…

“Huh,” Keris voices as a thought occurs to her. ‘Lilunu?’, she scrawls into a corner of the rubbing. Her mentor has no serfs who descend from her directly, but there are many who work within the Conventicle. It’ll probably be worth seeing whether Keris can get it to work by calling on her lady’s generosity, given the range of breeds willing to do the bidding of Voice of the Yozis.

In fact, Keris suspects that rituals to Lilunu might well allow more... flexibility than perhaps is meant. She’s seen the shows they put on in the All-Thing; heard all those ambitious citizens offering their services to the Conventicle, crown-princess of Hell, love of Ligier. Things made to make it look like she has more power than she actually does.

She’s pretty sure she can grab those oaths and pull on them, in Lilunu’s name.

She smiles. Oh yes. That will be a lot of fun. And give her more leeway in helping Lilunu out, too. The Cult of Nululi is getting along nicely - and she needs to do some more work on that painting-spell so she can talk to her mentor more regularly and check how much it’s helping - but things like this which turn empty fripperies into real power on Lilunu’s behalf... those are always worth having.

... even if Lilunu isn’t quite ready or willing to make any use of them yet.

As if summoned by the thought, the back of Keris’s neck prickles slightly. She raises her head, puts down her pen and hazards a guess.

“Hello Hermione,” she says, glancing over at her reflection in one of the Szorenic lacquer mirrors. It’s still red-haired and brown-skinned, but Hermione could well be hiding for the moment. “Come to see what we’re up to?”

Something slithers into view. But she doesn’t supplant Keris or Rathan. Hermione is here, in that albino little girl who looks so much like Antifasi, her Oramusque sister. Is that really her form, or is it just one of the first ones she wore and so she falls back on? And what does it mean that Antifasi can never see her wear that shape.

“You’ve been away for some time, Kerissss,” hisses the serpent-dragon, jealously settling herself in the lap of Keris’s unaware reflection.

“I have,” Keris says, releasing Iris with a flick of her wrist to plunge through the mirror and wrap herself around her sister. Rapid little plumes of multicoloured flame form mountains, dragons, wagons, big people with little people sitting in their chests and beetles with little people figures riding on top of them, before ending in a repeated set of mountains, a horned person-figure with swirly rainbow-fire around it and seven plumes of fire at the same time.

“... yes,” says Keris, after the excited recap has finished. “To, uh... translate in case you didn’t get all that; we found a crashed Shogunate... mass transport thing up in the mountains on the mainland, Rathan initiated into sorcery, and then Haneyl set an acre of mountainside on fire and had a screaming fight with me. We came back to sort things out for making it an extended trip so we can get everything.”

She purses her lips. “Some of the things up there are automata,” she adds. “I’m... not sure exactly who’s going to end up getting what, and the ones up there are a bit big, but if I get my hands on them and do some work replicating them, I might be able to make you a golem or automaton body you can anchor yourself in. Have you been enjoying your armour-fortress?”

“Yes,” Hermione says, arms wrapped around the neck of the Keris-reflection, leaning into Iris as the little tattoo-girl nuzzles her cheek. “So, Rathan, you’re a sorcerer now.”

“Yes, I am.” Rathan lowers his voice, and smiles at the dragon. “Haneyl is _furious_ ,” he almost coos to her. “It’s eating her up inside. Gnawing in her. She doesn’t understand that it takes clearness and realisation to do it. I think you’re much closer to it than she is.”

It’s the right thing to say. The little girl puffs herself up. “Well, of course,” Hermione says. “She’s not strong enough. She’s out of balance, and she just can’t handle her mercury. Not like me or you or your girlfriend. We’re just better at it than her.”

((9 successes from Rathan to placate Hermione))

“Oula was closest to you,” Keris agrees, tilting her head. “And of my children, Rathan’s the nearest to you in nature. Huh. I wonder if it’s something about mercury-fluidity that makes it easier?” She purses her lips, setting down her notes for a moment. “Hermione? Just recount the trials for me again, would you? Let’s see if we can pick out where you are.”

“First is a Journey,” Hermione sighs. “I hid within your home as you crossed the Desert and found my way into this new world, remember? And you’ve given me Tutelage. Back in Hell I had to bow and scrape and act servile and pretend to be a good little girl for _Orabilissss_.” She hisses the name hatefully. “I know all too well what Humility feels like.”

Keris taps her lips thoughtfully. “Fear, then. And Choice. Fear isn’t just about _being_ afraid. It’s _facing_ your fears. Accepting them and standing up to them. Mine in Malra was... was standing up to mama. Maryam,” she corrects herself. “Down in the Underworld, when I finally told her ‘no’.”

Hermione’s face screws up a lot like Hany’s does when she concentrates. “I need to _show them_ ,” she decides, eventually. “I... I can’t fight them in Hell, but I need to... to make them suffer. To tear down one of their cults, so they’ll lose something they care about. And... and if they find out it’s me, I might be in trouble. It’s sssssscary. So is that Fear?”

“Yes,” Keris decides, after some thought. “Hmm. Yes, a deliberate action to spite them, regardless of the risks. That would qualify.” She winds a hair-tendril around her finger thoughtfully. “Obviously I’d rather you didn’t hit one of _my_ cults, and since it’s Orabilis you hate it should really be something Cecelynite anyway, while mine are mostly Lilunu’s here on Saata, Lintha contacts and some worshippers of Ligier out in the Anarchy. I know Sasi seeded a bunch in An Teng, but that’s right under the noses of the Dragonblooded...”

She drums her fingers on the desk, and looks over to Rathan. “Darling? While you were down in the south, did you happen across anything that might suit Hermione’s purposes as a target?”

Rathan smiles widely. “Oh, not the south, mama,” he observes. “But you know, there’s someone fairly close by who deserves everything that comes to him; who hates you and is a slave to the worst kind of awful, bossy demon prince...”

Keris tilts her head - and smiles viciously.

“That’s true,” she murmurs. “Well then, Hermione. I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I just can’t help you. After all, as the head of the Lower South-Western Division, I couldn’t possibly endorse anything that might inconvenience my respected colleague Deveh of the Upper South-Western Division, and the Pyrian cults he’s sowing all through the High Lands of An Teng.”

She retrieves a thick binder and slaps it down on the desk. “You see? Look at all the important work he’s doing, and all the valuable skills and allies he has. He’s clearly far too important to the Reclamation for me to let you attack _him_ , and since there are no other easy targets... well, I guess it’s just too bad. I suppose if you want to look around Saata for any cults I’ve missed here, though, I could dig into my inner Hoard and give you a more mobile anchor than my armour. And of course, you can call on Iris to help you with anything that needs a pair of hands, like turning pages.”

She shunts the binder - which has all of Keris’s observations on Deveh’s work and skills, gathered from spying on him for Sasi and watching his boasts at the Althing - closer to the mirror. Iris flows out of it, exhales a curious question mark, and levers the cover open to expose the first page.

Hermione smiles broadly, showing a missing tooth at the front. “Oh, Keris,” she says warmly. “You keep on reminding me we’ve got so much in common. I can taste the envy on you, and all that spite,” a forked tongue flicks out, “and Rathan understands it too. You want to make him _suffer_ because he thinks he’s better than Keris. Drag him down and make him drown.” She claps her hands. “When I get older, I’m going to marry you!” she announces.

“... well, sorcery first,” Keris says, making a mental note to step in if and when that remark gets back to Oula. “I’ll be taking Iris back to Shuu Mua with me in a few days time, but... you’re her sister, so you _might_ be able to call on her for help if you need it. You certainly have permission to, in case that makes a difference.”

Rathan is not so calm about vows of intended marriage, and splutters. “Hermione, you’re like a little cousin to me,” he says, clearly thinking along the same lines. “That’s not... it’s not okay.”

“Doesn’t that make it more okay? Ali and Zanyira are cousins,” Hermione points out, with the aggravating logic of a small child.

“Well, since we’re so much in common, it’s more you’re my half-sister,” he says hastily.

“It’s not fair! I’ll marry Oula too since she’s really clever and likes mercury as much as I do! And Keris tells her twins it’s good to share their toys, so I can marry both of you and share you!”

Rathan’s eyes are slightly wild. “You’re still a little girl, Hermione. When you get bigger, you’ll realise you want someone else who isn’t me.”

“Sharing is good,” Keris agrees, earning herself a look of utmost betrayal from Rathan. “But it doesn’t always work out well in love, sweetheart. Sasi and Testolagh and I tried that, and it wound up not working at all. Besides.” She smiles gently, and moves over to the mirror to kneel down; Hermione shifting from her reflection’s lap to just on the other side of the glass from her.

“You’re Iris’s sister, and she’s my foster-daughter,” Keris says softly, placing a hand on the glass. Hermione mimics the gesture; her little hand small against Keris’s. Iris shifts back into a dragon and twines around their palms; half-in and half-out of the mirror. “Lilunu charged me with looking after her and raising her - and if you’re her sister and you’re under my care as well, I’d like to think that makes you my daughter too. Would you like that?”

Hermione’s eyes widen. “You mean that?” she whispers. “You’ll be _my_ mother in a way Lilunu never is!?”

“She tries her best,” Keris placates. “And I know she loves you - please never doubt that. But you’re allowed more than one mama. And I’d be proud to call you a daughter of mine, and help fill the gaps where Lilunu can’t always be there.”

She nods desperately, bobbing her head, and her form flickers into another little girl. She looks a bit like Lilunu, with the Realm features - but not entirely. Those red eyes have a Tairan sit to them, and she has the cheekbones of a highlander. And her long white hair moves like a limb. “Mother?” she tries.

Keris’s eyes go teary, and she leans in to press a gentle kiss against her reflected forehead. “My quick little silverling,” she whispers. “ **I am going to work out how to get in there with you and give you the _biggest_ hug. I promise.**”

It’s only as the reverb echoes back from the walls and she feels the vow carve itself into her bones that she realises what she just did.

((Uh. Okay. So, roll me Per + Presence + Style for that, to see how hard that hits home.))  
((4+5+1 Firebrand Demagouge+1 bonus {Principle rated at 4+}+3 stunt+4 “Clan and Kin”=18. 8 sux.))

“You meant it.” She sounds shocked. “You... actually meant it.”

“She did,” Rathan confirms. “Vali’s going to be happy with you for that.”

Keris blushes. “Well.” She clears her throat. “Yes. But you’re right, sweetheart. I did mean it. **I’ll find a way to give you a proper hug, no matter what it takes.** ”

Hermione trembles, and breaks into tears, fat metallic tears rolling from her eyes to pool on the floor around her. “Lilunu promised that,” she sobs, “but she _never_ did it. She lied! But you mean it! You mean it! No matter what!”

“I do,” Keris whispers, as Iris wraps around her sister and croons little hugging figures of flame. “I do, I do. I promise.”

Eventually, after a few heartbreaking minutes of tears that make Keris _desperately_ wish she could plunge through the mirror and hug her right now, Hermione regains her composure and chivvies Keris back to her seat at the desk, so that she can plant herself in reflection-Keris’s lap and cling insistently. Keris offers Rathan a sheepish smile, and tilts her head in a tiny half-shrug. At least this has probably derailed any marriage plans within the family.

“Look, mama,” Rathan says with a shrug. “At this point, I’ve just accepted that Evedelyl means you’re never going to stop having and adopting babies. I’m just going to be the second eldest in a very, very large family.”

“... that’s fair,” she admits. “Alright then. Get back to studying your countermagic - and share with your new little sister. No reason why she can’t learn some more now for a head-start when she gets there.”

* * *

Keris spends a lazy week back at her mansion, away from her family’s fighting and struggles. It’s longer than she really should be away, but she just... she just doesn’t want to go back to the fighting and the conflict and to have to put up with Haneyl anymore. She just wants peace and quiet and to be with the simple human side of her family. And Hermione, who clearly desperately wants to spend time around Keris and Iris.

But after a week, the nagging feeling of her responsibilities tells her she needs to get back.

So she sends a message, telling Asarin she’s found the spell and she’s studying it and she’ll be back in a week, just before the new moon. Ah. Just a little more time off.

Without the constant distractions, she’s pretty sure she’s picked up the spell, and with the new knowledge in hand, she has a big, fancy dinner with the human elements of her family.

Zanyi holds up a sparkling green glass filled with apple cordial. “To our family!” she announces.

“To the Daiwye reborn!” Xasan adds.

“To safety and quiet times,” says Ali.

Rathan smiles at Keris. “To newfound family and my good teachers,” he says.

Keris raises her glass with a grin. “To love,” she says. “And promises.”

“I wanna say something!” Hany blurts out.

“Well, then say it,” Ali says.

“Well... uh... I saw a fish and it was kind of shiny and also kind of red and it nibbled my toes and then I tried to catch it with a net but it swam away,” Hany settles on. 

“... a toast to that fish?” her mother checks.

“Yes!” She considers. “Also, dragonflies. And butterflies. Daddy, if dragonflies are little dragons, are butterflies made of butter?”

Keris snorts. When Hany turns injured eyes on her, she waves her hand. “No no, I’m not laughing at you,” she promises. “Just, there was something a bit like that back in Nexus - different language, and it was a type of bird instead of a bug, but apart from that I wondered the same thing almost word-for-word.” She makes a face, remembering the comedy of errors that had followed. Those days seem fresher in her mind after her dream of Ney and Nexus - and she’s remembering the happier times with Rat more than the sadness, too. Maybe it’s the good mood she left the dream in, or the flush of new love.

“Anyway,” she finishes. “It turned out the answer was ‘no’. And also ‘cheap ladders don’t balance on wires very well’, but that’s a story for another time.”

Atiya doesn’t have a toast to offer. She’s too busy looking at her face in the back of the polished spoon laid out in front of her. She has to have a wooden handle on her spoon, because she doesn’t like the feel of cold metal - or warm metal - on her skin. Keris strokes her hair and makes sure she has little bowls of sticky rice, plain pancakes and egg noodles in coconut-milk broth. Atiya seems to like plain tastes and simple, unflavoured foods best, and once Keris worked that out, it got a lot easier to feed her. She’ll want some time on the breast later, but for now she seems quite happy to intently fill her pancakes with clumps of sticky rice and carefully measure out and eat exactly four spoonfuls of coconut-milk noodles between each one.

Zanyi claps her hands together. She’s talked with Keris - and now that she’s missed two monthlies, she’s decided to bring it up. “Ali, I have something to say,” she says.

“Oh?”

“You... uh, might want to make sure your mouth is empty, dear. You don’t react well to surprises.”

He swallows. “Oh dear. What’s gone wrong?”

“Nothing’s gone wrong.” She smiles, green eyes watery. “I’m pregnant again, and Keris thinks it’s settled, and I’ve missed two monthlies. You’re going to be a daddy again.”

“Oh. Oh!” Ali’s eyes crease up, and he rises to hug his wife. “That’s wonderful news. Hany, you’re going to be a big sister.”

“I am? From where?” Hany looks at Keris. “Has Aunty Keris decided to give you Aiko? Because give her back! I don’t want her as a sister!”

Keris snorts again, this time with no excuse. “No, darling,” she says. “You’re going to be a big sister because your mama is growing you a little sibling in her tummy - like I grew Kali and Ogin, remember? How I was all big and round back in Baisha, and you could feel them kicking inside me and waiting to come out? You’re going to be a big sister by the end of the year the same way.”

“Oh!” Hany considers this. “You were really fat! Is Mama going to be really really fat too?”

Tossing Zanyi a distinctly amused look, Keris nods. “Yes, that’s _exactly_ right, sweetheart,” she agrees. “At the moment she’s not, because your little sibling is...”

She scans the table, and picks out a clump of sticky rice from the main bowl. “Only _this_ big! Still very, very tiny. But they’ll grow and grow and grow as the months past, until your mama looks like she’s swallowed a giant coconut whole!”

“Wow!” Hany bounces up and down. “Is that really true, Daddy?”

“Yes, it is,” Ali says. “Well, at least as far as I know. Aunty Keris is a healer and a midwife so knows a lot more about women’s bodies than me.” He then splutters when Xasan slaps him on the back. 

“Congratulations,” their uncle booms. “You’ve done the family proud. Another little Daiwye!” The two men hug, and if they’re leaking tears it is only manly things from the chilli in the rice.

Zanyi sniffs. “I’m going to be doing most of the work,” she observes archly. “Unless... hey, Keris, I don’t suppose you could give the baby to Ali instead?” She smiles wickedly. “I think it’s his turn this time.”

Keris puts a finger to her lips and looks deliberately thoughtful for long enough that Ali starts looking nervous, but then shakes her head with a grin. “Sorry cousin. I guess you’re going to have to put up with being all fat and getting kicked in the bladder again. But look on the bright side! I’m going to be getting another adorable niece or nephew out of it! And without doing any of the work myself!”

“Ah, curses.” Zanyi shakes her head. “What good is all that magic if you can’t even offload all the unpleasant work to the men?”

“For you, my dear, I’ll try to find a way,” Keris smirks. “You know, in case you and Ali ever want to try for a third.”

“Keris!” Ali squeaks.

Rathan nods, looking green. “Please don’t say things like that,” he says.

“Well, I’ll keep that in mind,” Zanyi says gravely. “And yes, Hany, Aunty Keris is going to be there to help me with this. There’s no risk of anything going wrong. You don’t need to get worried that mama will get sick again and be ill. She’s all better now, so having a baby will only hurt a little bit... and maybe make her want to kill Daddy,” she murmurs too softly for the little girl to hear, which must be a comment aimed only at Keris. Remembering Kali and Ogin’s birth, Keris nods emphatically and makes a mental note to brew some kind of painkiller that won’t harm the baby before her due date. It’ll no doubt be much appreciated.

“And remember,” she adds, “as the big sister of the family, you get to help raise the little one and boss them around when they’re doing something silly. Like toddling into the forge,” she adds, throwing a glance at Ali. “Or bringing home snakes and baby wildcats in their pockets.”

For some reason, that earns her a glare not only from Ali, but also a guilty giggle from Zanyi. “Does that mean that Kali and Ogin will be _encouraging_ the new baby to get up to all kinds of mischief?” Ali says dryly.

“I bear no responsibility for what those two get up to,” Keris immediately denies, raising her hands in defence. “I only mothered them. I might be able to duel gods, but it would take more power than I know of to stop my twins getting up to mischief. Sorry, but your children are doomed to have their cousins be trouble-making bad influences.”

She pauses, leans over and drops a kiss on Atiya’s head. “Except for this one, of course,” she corrects herself. “Who is a perfectly-behaved little princess.”

Atiya looks up from her food, peering through her thick glasses at the rest of the family she looks nothing like. She looks at Zanyi and tilts her head, then picks up a little green broad bean and throws it in her general direction.

“Bad baby!” Hany announces triumphantly.

Keris sighs dramatically. “Prove me wrong, why don’t you?” she tuts. “Ah, my babies are all such rule-breakers. How could this have come to be?”

That gets not only Zanyi, but Xasan, Ali and even Rathan laughing - and Hany joining in, happy to share the joke even without fully understanding it.

Ali wipes his eyes, and extracts himself from the hug with Xasan, heading over to Keris to wrap her up in a hug. “You’re going to be Aunty Keris yet again,” he says warmly. “Oh, so... seven months to get ready, mmm? When are you going to return the favour? Are we going to hear the pitter patter of a tiny baby Jackal?”

It is impossible for such a comment to sneak past the gossip-witch herself, and Zanyi’s ears are seemingly as keen as Keris’s own when it comes to personal secrets being discussed in her approximate area. “Sorry, what? Keris, are you seeing the _Jackal_ now?”

Keris’s ears turn red, and she squeaks. “Uh. Um. M-maybe? In... I mean... there might have been a... a sort of shared dream, where I might have sort of...”

She glances at Hany, watching curiously, and cringes. “Played... a game of tag with him?”

Zanyi’s hands go to her cheeks. “Keris!” she squeaks, before sidling closer. “To think you were keeping secrets from me! Such disrespect for your elders! I will send the wrath of the family matriarch down on you,” she drops to a whisper no one else can hear, “if you don’t tell me _everything_ after dinner once we’ve put the babies to bed and sent the men out to have celebratory drinks!”

Keris groans and glares at Ali. “One week, big brother,” she sighs. “You couldn’t keep a secret for _one week_.”

But, despite her blushes, her protests and her attempts at deflections... in the end, she capitulates.

After all, the wrath of the family matriarch is not to be trifled with.


	9. Chapter 9

When mother is away, the mice will play. Keris crests the hills that lead to the hidden valley, and realises to her horror just how true that saying is.

There is a jungle there, sprawling and grey and foetid which has devoured one of the flanks of the valley, pushing as far as nearly up to the wyldpool. Asarin’s fortifications have grown up and up. There are marks of devastation in the tainted wyld-corrupted landscape that can only be Eko and Calesco, because only they would clear-cut entire parts of the landscape like that. And the air is warmer and tastes like Hell.

“Oh... oh wow,” Rathan says behind Keris, turning his attention away from little Atiya in her comfy warm backsling. “Looks like leaving Haneyl alone was a mistake. Knowing my baby sister, she’s gone and grown a jungle around her while she sulks. Hopefully that’s at least blocking off some of the wyld pocket. But you probably should have sent her back home. You also shouldn’t have got lost on the way back. We missed the new moon.”

Iris nods wisely, breathing out a wagging finger directed down at the valley.

“Fffff-” Keris hisses. “Urgh. Yeah, okay. Maybe.”

She sighed, and started trudging down towards the fortifications. Asarin and Evedelyl will be there, and that’s probably her best bet for getting a reasonable explanation of what’s gone on in her absence. “Maybe I shouldn’t have left it a month,” she admits under her breath.

“Don’t blame yourself, mama,” Rathan says, stretching. “It’s not really your fault. It’s probably more like...”

“Mama, mama, mama, you’re back!” Nara calls out happily; a statue-boy with a centipede’s lower body, scuttling up to Keris at impressive speed. Cheerful cries from his back indicate that Kali and Ogin are hitching a ride on him.

“... his,” Rathan says under his breath.

Keris gets just enough warning to shift Atiya into her hair before Nara balls into her, knocking her down into a hugpile of her younger children. Kitty-Kali is cheerfully gnawing at her hair in greeting, Ogin is latched up to his mother’s chest and won’t let go, and Nara is wrapping her up in stone insectoid coils.

“You’ve been away so long I missed you so much so much so much,” Nara burbles, kissing her cheek.

“Hello, sweetheart,” Keris smiles, cuddling Nara back. “Have you been being good and staying out of trouble?”

“Of course I have,” he protests indignantly. “I’ve been looking after all the babies and giving them things to do...”

“Mama mama mama look at my piccy!” Kali cheers, presenting something blobby and hand-painted on silk.

“... and I’ve been talking to Asarin and everyone else and Eko and Calesco aren’t being any use because they’re spending all their time up on the hot springs and I’m even keeping Haneyl under control and giving her hugs and talking to her so actually I’m the one in the least trouble at all. Well, me and Evedeyl, I guess, but she says I’ve been the easiest! So there!”

“Well _done_ , sweetheart,” Keris praises, giving Nara another cuddle and picking up Kali with her hair, where she takes the chance to press delighted kisses to Atiya’s cheeks until Keris deposits her youngest back in the insulated backsling. “Thank you. And look at you, little feather! Oh, look at your picture, it’s so pretty!” Ogin’s hair brushes her chin, and she drops an affectionate kiss on the top of his head; shifting so that he can cling better. “Why don’t we go down to talk to Evedelyl and Asarin, then? And sit down and eat, because mama and Rathan are all tired from climbing all the way up these steep mountains again!”

Ogin won’t let go of her. He’s just clinging on, face buried in her chest. Kali, meanwhile, is just deliriously happy that people she likes are back, and sits happily on her older brother’s shoulders, babbling about various things she’s seen - “... a butt’fly, Ratty, it was bright pink and it tasted nasty when I pounced it, yuck, and I gave it to Gin and he said it was yuck because it was, it was really yuck!” - and Rathan is enjoying her company.

Of course, that goes out the window when Oula is waiting for him at the entrance to the growing fortifications. She knew he was coming - she must have, because she’s had the time to dress up nice in figure-hugging silks. She waits, tight as a coiled spring. When he approaches, she explodes into his arms and snuggles up tight.

“You shouldn’t have been away so long,” she chides him.

“I was studying, Oulie.”

“You hurt my feelings.”

“Bad Ratty!” Kali declares, bopping him on the head with a chubby hand.

“You said it, Kali,” Oula agrees.

Evedeyl is behind her, towering over them all. “Did you get what you wanted to do done?” she asks Keris, after sweeping her up into a hug of her own that leaves Keris’s legs dangling.

“Everything and more,” Keris confirms, hugging her mama back and shifting Atiya around from her backsling to show her to the maternal demon lord. “Atiya was missing you, too! Can you look after her for a bit while I catch up on what I missed? And...” she lowers her voice, “maybe fill me in on some of what happened after I left?”

Evedeyl carries Keris and Atiya (and Ogin, who’s being mama’s head monkey and playing with Iris) in, and sits her down on her lap. Rathan deposits Kali with Zanara, and then mysteriously isn’t there anymore. Neither is Oula.

“So,” Evedeyl says thoughtfully, her voice deep. “You slipped out at the crack of dawn with Rathan, without leaving much to set things up - or making up with Haneyl. She took that as further evidence you hated her and just wanted to teach Rathan.” She looks at Keris a tad accusingly.

Keris winces. “O-okay, but in my defence, I was pretty sure that trying to talk to her anymore would just lead to a bigger fight.” She bites her lip, guilt gnawing at her, and looks up sadly. “She really thinks I feel that way?”

“She has... talked herself into believing you love Rathan more than her.” 

“It is very like her. But I think I’ve stopped her being too silly. She’s still simmering, but I stopped her boiling over,” Nara adds helpfully, crawling up to sit on Evedeyl’s other knee.

“But then she had a large argument with Asarin, and Asarin called her a brat - and Haneyl decided she would build a better jungle fort than Asarin’s ‘stupid castle’. So in a sense, she redirected some of her resentment to the False Sun rather than you.”

“Well... that’s better than hating me, I guess,” Keris muttered, looking down again and giving Ogin another kiss on the forehead. “You’re being very clingy, moonbeam. Did you miss me that much?”

She planted a few more kisses on his temples, trying to get a smile, and spared a moment to glance up again at Evedelyl, shifting to sit in the crook of her arm. “Speaking of Asarin... how’s she doing? She, uh... didn’t react well to Haneyl and Kuha. Have they been doing that... more?”

Evedelyl frowns, her big rough features creasing up - and her tail lashing about. “Kuha came crying to me after she could not find you. You left that early. She said that Haneyl was scaring her and she wasn’t welcome in her bed anymore. She...” she clearly looks for her words carefully, “she has been spending time up with Eko and Calesco at the hot springs occasionally, but otherwise is just trying to keep out of the way. Some things, she didn’t want to talk about.”

“Wait, _what?”_ Keris draws back in shock, eyes wide. “Haneyl... scared her?” She pales. “She didn’t... no. She... she wouldn’t, even...”

Even like this, she wants to say. Haneyl would never _hurt_ Kuha, not even in this state... would she? Keris _wants_ to believe that. Has to believe that. But the grave expression on Evedelyl’s face is...

“I-is she okay?” Keris asks, already scared of the answer. “Haneyl didn’t... do... anything bad? Fuck, if I’d’ve _known_... mama, I swear I wouldn’t have gone like that if I’d... I thought having fun with Kuha would help her blow off steam and calm down without getting into another row! I thought...”

“Haneyl hurt her feelings by bringing up Calesco and now Kuha doesn’t want to get kissy anymore,” Nara chips in.

“I don’t like how everyone is shouting and arguing and not talking,” Ogin mumbles into Keris’s chest. “It’s horrible. No one told me why they’re doing it. It doesn’t make sense. Make them make sense, mama.”

“I’m sorry, darling,” Keris whispers to him. “I will, I promise. I’ll talk to everyone and sort this out. Okay?” She wriggles a little, and Evedelyl indulgently puts her down. “Mama? Can you look after the babies while I get everyone together for a talk?”

“That’s a bad idea, Keris,” Evedelyl tells her bluntly. “I wouldn’t want to get everyone in one place together as it is.”

“Things are that bad?” Keris blows out a sigh. “Alright. I’ll talk to them one by one, then.” She pauses, and nods firmly. “Starting, I guess... with Haneyl.”

“If you think it’s the best,” her mama says. Planting a pair of kisses on Evedelyl’s cheeks, Keris gives Ogin an extra cuddle, leaves Rathan to hold down the fort and pacify his girlfriend, and heads out into the grey jungle with a machete.

This, she knows... is not going to be pretty.

It would also probably have helped to bring a present.

But though she looks until past lunchtime, she can’t find Haneyl in the sprawling, humid Swamp-in-facsimile. Her daughter is hiding from her. She might even be close enough that she’s watching her, because Keris has been feeling... watched. It reminds her of what happened when she first met Haneyl. But unlike then, there’s also hostility in the air, not innocent curiosity and wariness.

In the depths she finds a glade, though, one lit by many burning flowers - and in that glade is the remnants of a house. One of the long-ago ruins. Trees have grown over it, and these grey trees have grown a canopy of leaves that replaces the long-gone roof.

There are almost no creature comforts in this house. A bed of moss that smells of Haneyl - and a hint of Zanara. A pile of things in the corner; salvaged Shogunate trash and things stolen from camp. A pile of treasures filched from the Shogunate train, but just thrown in a corner rather than valued. A pool outside that’s probably what she’s been washing in. If she’s been washing.

No clothes. No mirrors. No luxuries. And from the fresh holes in the wall, Haneyl hasn’t always been human-sized when she’s come in here.

Keris hears hoofbeats outside. They’re heavier than a horse, with the sound of a rider - but not a rider who breathes. And they reek of Haneyl’s power.

Farisyya, no doubt.

Biting her lip, she goes out to meet them. Either they can tell her something about how Haneyl has been, or her daughter has sent them to confront her mother.

There’s six of them - hulking beasts, horses with too-aware eyes. Upon their backs are thorn-impaled wyld-twisted men, or once-men, or... something like that. It’s hard to tell, because they’re dead and overgrown. No one here to cover them up in pretty armour, no; the corpses are festooned only with flowers, though the lead one wears one of the Shogunate helmets on her rider’s head.

“Who are you?” the lead demands, arrogance clear in her voice. “This is not your land, and you intrude on our lady’s land. Why should we not slay you?”

Keris looks them over assessingly, and sighs. Newly created demons who’ve never known Krisity, and thus don’t know her. Great. “I am your lady’s mother,” she says tiredly. “I am here to talk- to apologise to her. Is your princess willing to grant me an audience and hear me out?” Playing to the formality and courtly rituals always made Haneyl feel better when she was younger, so it’s at least worth a shot now.

“Her what?” the chestnut behind the lead says. “This foul miscreant pretends to be what to our lady?”

“Surely nothing that matters,” a male pale horse says.

“I dare say she would make a good trophy with such distinctive hair,” the lead observes.

((Rolling Temperance 2 with a -1 penalty from being _really fucking stressed_. BOTCH.))

Rolling her eyes, Keris points at the leader. The others follow the direction of her finger, and blink as she snaps her fingers.

The explosion of growth from directly underneath the Shogunate-helmeted rider takes all of them by surprise, and in an only a second or two, a patch of vines and snarling long grass almost ten metres across has ensnared all of them. Keris’s caste mark flares to life on her forehead, and she takes a deep breath.

_“Now listen here,”_ she snarls; crowned by an empty wheel of viridian fire, hair billowing out to the sides like a cobra’s hood and up over her head like scorpion-tails. “I have _only just got back_ from a trip longer than you’ve been _alive for_ , thinking that I would find Haneyl _calmer_ from my absence. Instead, I apparently managed to make her feel _worse_ , and things have fallen apart here even worse than they were when I was _here_. My daughter thinks I _hate her_ , and either you are able to take me to her so I can apologise enough to make it up to, or you are _in the way_.” She bares her teeth, pinning them all with a vicious glare. _”Choose which one you want to be.”_

((4+5+2 stunt+3 Prince of Hell Style=14. Bah, only 4 sux on INTIMIDATION-FU. Though on the plus side, the caste mark and Devil-Weeds probably modified that in my favour a bit.))  
((So amusingly, they don’t take any kind of environmental penalty from environmental plant things, and they have “My Honour 3” so that just kind of bounces off that))

Keris didn’t really expect them to step out of her thorns. She certainly didn’t expect them to come charging out en-masse, screaming battle cries with their hooves beating. And there was something terrifying about that, that sudden speed from something so large, the feeling of being small.

((They’re engaging in combat with her to run her off. They have Terrific Charge so Keris needs to roll Valour vs Diff 3 as they’re a formation))  
((Terrific Charge  
Keywords: Emotion;  
A character charged by a farisy must roll Valour, or suffer a -2 internal penalty to all Strength and Dexterity based rolls for the rest of the scene as terror weakens their limbs and slows their blows. This is at Difficulty 1 if the cataphract is alone, or Difficulty 3 if they come in a formation. This costs 1wp to resist against a solo farisy or 3wp against a formation, and spending the willpower immunises the character against this Charm for a scene.)))  
((Amusingly this is also a compel against Keris’s cowardice.))  
((Oh yeah. Fuck. Forgot about that trick of theirs.))  
((...))  
((... you know, it occurs to me that Racing Vitaris would be perfectly in character to activate now. And on the one hand it would get her away from the charge, but it would also, uh, send all of them flying. :V))  
((So what are you doing? Did you roll Valour?))  
((Oh right, the other effect. 2 sux!))  
((... crap. This counts as a formation, doesn’t it?))  
((Yeeeeeeeep))  
((... on the plus side, if that shockwave blew them over, Keris can shrug it off - and, sigh, gain another point of Limit - by laughing at how dumb they look.))  
((And will do so, putting her at, uh... argh, stupid browser, load.))  
((... eesh. Limit 9.))  
((OK, 5 successes from Tireless Steed Style, so they resist the knockdown. Which means they’re going into this engagement with the goal of running Keris off and taking her as a trophy if she doesn’t run. What’s Keris’s goal here?))  
((In general? Find Haneyl. Relevant to these six, they’re obstacles, so she’ll try to make them flee, and if they refuse to flee she’ll beat them into the ground.))  
((OK, so they’re trying to hurt her. They are not mortals, so they’re not blinded. Vine Wreathed Cataphract style 13, +1 for Magnitude. 8 Successes. And the same provides their Defence - ha, 10+1 successes.))  
((Keris needs to roll her own attack pool against them and her defence pool.))  
((5+5+2 stunt+3 Wild Alleycat Style+10 Malfeas ExD=25. She’ll be keeping up her speed, unimpeded by the jungle, and using her hair and fists to charge-smash them. Uh, does that pool work for both attack and defence?))  
((Yes, but it’s separate rolling - and her defence has a -2 due to stubby limbs against lance-equipped cavalry.))  
((... her hair is 3 metres long!))  
((Fair enough, yeah, she has Reach too.))  
((Cool. And, um, apparently Keris is very upset and has _lots of emotions to work out_ , because she just got 22 successes on ASSAULT AND BATTERY.))  
[ **10 10 10 10 10 10** 9 9 9 9 9 9 8 8 8 7 6 6 5 2 2 2 1 1 1]  
((She “merely” got 14 on defence.))  
((Yeah, sure, you can kill them or just beat them down - probably breaking some limbs - as you wish because they’re just 1CDs. They could have actually hurt you if you’d rolled average-ly, but they’re easy to beat.))

Keris reacts quite reasonably to their assault by exploding. Or at least, that’s what it probably feels like to the farisyya. With a thunderous boom, she rockets off to the side and out of their path; releasing a blinding flash of light and a pulse of force that blows apart the nearest side of the growth patch and slams into the cataphracts like a hammer blow.

The blast doesn’t knock them down or blind them - urgh, these assholes are immune to both of her tactics so far! Well, fine. They want to charge? _She’ll show them how to charge_.

Keris doesn’t slow down. Her brilliant comet-like afterimage streaks out behind her as she crashes through the jungle; trees and vines bending out of her way hastily to let her pass. She tracks a wide curve around; unable to apply her usual pinpoint turns, and as their charge begins to peter out, she hits them from the flank.

Two lances spear for her, and are batted aside like toys by steel-hair locks. One fist slams into the stomach of a rider, ripping it loose from its farisy owner in full, and a flying kick takes another wooden horse in the hind leg; breaking it cleanly.

By the time they’ve gotten themselves turned around to where she went, she’s hitting them again from another angle. And another. And another; her wild laughing taking on a hysterical edge. Eventually, as the lead rider falls to its knees with a broken jaw and a decapitated puppet-rider, Keris skids to a halt in the clearing again and stumbles, falling to her knees. She’s not hurt, but the emotional stress and the adrenaline of the fight is getting to her. Her laughing shifts into sobbing, before she manages to silence it with a few shuddery deep breaths.

“Just,” she gasps out to the bruised, broken-limbed farisyya. They’re all alive, albeit sporting a nasty collection of bruises, a broken bone or two each and an obliterated set of puppet-riders. “Just tell me where my daughter is. Please.”

“Since you’re going to go break _my_ things if I don’t tell you,” a voice from right behind her says, “I’ll show up. And then you can fuck right off.”

Haneyl is there. She’s naked, but not much is showing; she’s so covered in mud and caked-on gore that it’s almost like she’s dressed. She’s up in the trees, crouching there, showing many rows of teeth. Her eyes burn under the canopy; there are dark veins visible on her arms. She’s trembling faintly.

“Oh... Haneyl.” Keris pushes herself to her feet and looks up at her daughter, taking in her condition. “I... I’m sorry, Haneyl. I never meant to make you feel like I hated you. I _love_ you, even if we fight sometimes. When I left, it was because I... I didn’t think you _wanted_ me around.” She hangs her head. “I was wrong. I’m sorry.”

There’s a growl at the back of her throat. “Just go away. I don’t want to see you. Kuha’s still fucking in love with Calesco, if you’ve come about that, so she was thinking of her when I was doing my best to make her happy. Of course,” Haneyl makes a disgusted noise, “everyone knows she has a thing for you. The only reason she doesn’t make a move is you act not interested, so... s-so she sleeps with your daughters instead. But go on. With my best wishes.” There’s cruel vindictiveness in her voice. “She doesn’t want me, so you can have her with my blessing. Go comfort her or whatever you want.”

Keris flinches, and tries to push past that... whole thing. “I... if you really don’t want me to be here, I’ll go,” she tries. “But this is more important to me, Haneyl. I came here first, as soon as I got back and found out... what happened. I needed to apologise to you - to try and make up for hurting you. I’m sorry - please, please believe that I do love you, and I regret how I hurt your feelings, and-”

“You always say that, mama. And then you do it again.” The eyes burn brighter, up in the canopy. “You’re probably even sorry. Won’t stop it happening again.” Teeth grind. “I’ll come out to make sure I get _my_ cut of the treasure of this place. Everything else comes later.”

“... I... I understand.” Keris slumps. The guilt is stronger now. Haneyl is right. This isn’t the first time she’s screwed up. For all that she loves her children...

“I’m sorry I’m not a better mother for you,” she whispers. “And... I hope you feel better soon.”

Wincing again at Haneyl’s derisive snort, she trudges away through the undergrowth, back towards the fort.

But she just... she’s feeling hot and sticky from the swamp. She needs to relax. And check up on her other daughters. Shielding her eyes, she sees that there are now blocky stone structures up on the slopes. Another fortified place - a tower, even. She frowns. It looks sort of like Asarin’s stuff, but it’s clearly been modified afterwards. Some of the sleek curves are clearly Oula, but from the scale... yes, Vali has been there too.

Oh, her kids. They do like their hot springs. So does she.

An Eko makes her appearance before Keris is even half way up the bamboo-riddled slope, following paths that... well, were clearly cut by bare-footed Eko running. She’s happy to see mama back, she gestures, and Asarin is visiting for tea and hot springs fun time! It’s a girl’s day out!

“How have you and Asarin been?” Keris checks; matching pace to her. “No big fights? Everyone behaving?”

Eko, she flicks her hair, has been nothing less than perfect - of course. And Calesco has been a grump, but that’s why she’s Eko’s darling baby sister, so Calesco being a regular grump is basically just normal so everything is fiiiiiiiiine. Oh, and Aiko has been staying with Eko because she just loves her so much!

“I’m glad _she_ managed to dodge the worst of the fighting,” Keris breathes, relieved. “Ogin seemed really upset. Can you show me to the hot springs? I need to bathe and calm down from, uh... talking to Haneyl.”

Puffing herself up, Eko pompously skips to the fortified bathhouse. A door, she gestures, all build by Vali out of some iron they found, very nice, very nice, fairies can’t get through. Nice walls from Asarin, just as she expected from her bestie. And even Oula’s been helping out with things because she likes hotsprings too. They didn’t find any blood springs, but that’s to be expected because no one can make land as good as the Ruin.

She throws the doors wide open, lets her mother through, and heads to the interior structures made of salvaged Shogunate stone. They resemble bits of Saata in style, presumably what Vali saw around the city. Changing rooms are there, the baths are there, now Eko needs to go and stab more faeries. There’s an awful lot of them. She thinks Haneyl annoyed them, bye mama, bye! The last gestures are unclear from the speed at which she’s departing.

“... well that’s promising,” Keris mutters, and ventures inside. There are two possibilities here - one; that Asarin will be glad to see her but bitch about Haneyl, in which case she’ll feel guiltier, or two; that Asarin will be angry at her and she’ll have to quickly rush out the news about her new spell as a defensive tactic.

She’s not sure which she’s dreading more, to be honest.

The interior of the bathhouse is lit by dim brown fire - both in the walls, and from Asarin’s hair itself. Breaking up the gloom are sharp spots of Valiant fire, burning metal and shielded behind dark glass. Asarin is sprawled out in the water, flannel over her brow, and right next to her is Aiko doing exactly the same thing. Kuha appears to have been press-ganged into being her attendant, because she’s out of the water and looking after the towels.

Asarin cracks an eye open at Keris, and waves at her. “Get in, it’s lovely in here. Just what you need. Did you get things done? Can you unleash my demonic hordes?”

Keris wishes she could say she could, but between the delays, they’ve missed the new moon. Three weeks until the next one. “From your expression... no,” Asarin concludes.

((Crap.))

“I’ve mastered the spell!” Keris objects defensively. “At the next opportunity, I can open the gates with your authority and bring forth your armies! It... just happens to be that I can only do it at the new moon, so the next opportunity isn’t for... a while.”

“Ach, oh well.” Asarin gestures at her. “Get in. Humans make such a big deal about months. These ruins have been here a very long time. I’ve made a bunch of demons to guard the base tower, and Vali has been very helpful with the iron. We found some in the mountains, and I called it up for him to work on. He’s like a cute adorable puppy.”

“Aunty Keris,” Aiko chirps, waking from her doze in the heat. “You’re back, you’re back, you’re back!”

“Hello, my little dragon princess!” Keris sings, running hair-tendrils up her sides to tickle her. She shrieks happily, slapping at them, and Keris swoops in to give her a kiss on the forehead. “Has Asarin been taking care of you? I bet Vali’s been around a lot, huh? Tell me everything!”

“Aunty Keris!” Aiko scolds her. “You can’t wear your dress in the bath! It’ll get wet! Clothing isn’t for baths!” She perks up. “Asarin says boys aren’t for baths either so Vali can’t come in, but Mama always said baths are where all your friends get together, so which is it?”

“Aiko, I’m right,” Asarin says firmly.

Keris taps her nose wisely as she strips her Sirelmiyan bridal dress off. “You can have _both_ , with the right design of bath,” she tells her sort-of-daughter-figure. “All you need is a dividing wall for privacy, and all your friends can get together with you without the girls and boys getting mixed up.”

((“But which side does Zanara go in?” asks Aiko.))  
((“Depending on whether or not they’re deliberately flipping gender to cause trouble; they either go in whichever side they want, or get hogtied in the changing room,” answers Keris wisely.))

Aiko nods in understanding. “I guess Rathan is back now,” she says. “So Vali won’t be lonely! There aren’t boys around when Vali’s not here! Why aren’t there more boys around apart from Nara and Nara is funny and Nara’s sometimes a girl.” She pouts, as Keris lowers herself into the water. “It’s very confusing.”

Kuha scurries over. “Your towel,” she says quietly. “Lady Asarin says you need hot wet towels for the bath.”

“Well, of course you do! It’s for your forehead when you nap!” Asarin proclaims. “It dips in both sides, so new warm water gets absorbed and so it always stays warm!”

Keris examines this radical new innovation. “Clever,” she says approvingly. “But, uh, in a minute? I just need to talk to Kuha over here quickly.”

She pulls herself out of the bath, covering up with her hair, and tugs Kuha over to a relatively private corner. “I... heard about what happened between you and Haneyl,” she says quietly. “Evedelyl told me.”

Kuha bites her lip, flinching back. “I’m... s-sorry,” she stammers. “I... it wasn’t my fault this time.” She’s lightly dressed, but she’s sweating - and not just from the hot, humid bathhouse fed by natural springs.

“No, no, I know!” Keris waves her hands hastily, and gingerly draws Kuha into a hug. “I know,” she repeats. “This wasn’t on you. This was... this was mostly my fault, and I’m sorry, Kuha. I wanted to check up on you and make sure you’re okay. Evedelyl didn’t give me much detail, but... she said Haneyl scared you. Are you alright? Did she... did you get hurt?” She’s giving her first follower a quick look over as she speaks; searching for any signs of injury or lack of sleep.

Asarin flaps her hand over at them lazily from the water. “Look, just sit on the far side of the bath and keep quiet!” she calls out, raising her hand. “Stop scurrying around like mice if you don’t want to be heard. I want to see you relaxing here, Keris!” Aiko is nestled up in the crock of her arm - the two must have made friends through Eko, and Aiko does seem to be copying some of Asarin’s mannerisms. Maybe the Shogunate stylings remind Aiko of her mama.

With a worried look at Kuha, Keris guides her back over to the bath and slips in, raising an eyebrow at her when her question remains unanswered.

“No, no, she... she didn’t hurt me. Not like that,” Kuha mutters, with a worried glance over at Asarin. “But... um. That night you left. She... uh. She... well, uh, we kept at it all afternoon and into the night. I was... I sort of needed a break. I’m only human. She didn’t want to stop and got... upset because I pulled a muscle in my thigh. And then. Um.

Kuha wipes her eyes on her arm. “Well, she started shouting at me and asking if... if she was better than Calescohyra and I didn’t want to compare them because... well, obviously, Kerishyra. And she took it personally. So I decided I didn’t want to do it, and she got even more upset. So I slapped her. And she ran off. I, um. Still have her clothes. She’s been in the jungle that grew up since then.”

“Oh, Kuha,” Keris sighs. “I’m sorry. And well done for standing up for yourself. I’m proud of you.” She gave Kuha a one-armed side hug. “I already went in and spoke to her. She’s angry, but... more at me than at you. Not... unfairly, either.”

“I...” Kuha sniffs. “I miss the fun. With her. It’s been a month. I’m worried.”

“I know. Me too.” Keris sighs again, closing her eyes and feeling very... tired. Scraped thin. She can hear Kuha looking at her in concern, maybe noticing how worn down and fragile she is at the moment.

Forcing her eyes open again, she pastes a smile on her face before Aiko notices. “But I’m sure it’ll all work out in the end. I tried to apologise, and she didn’t accept it, but she at least heard me out. Give it another week or three - and get plenty of hugs from Evedelyl. You deserve them.”

Kuha cracks a weak smile. “She’s... she’s nice. Twig-children did not have mothers. We were given up before milk made our bones too strong and heavy.”

“Well,” Keris says firmly. “You’re part of a family now. You’ve got the right to spend time with her whenever you want to.”

“Mmm.” Kuha rests her head on Keris’s shoulder. “I... I just... I’ve just been keeping here. Around... uh, Asarinhyra. And Calescohyra and Ekohyra.” There’s a hitch in her voice. “Calescohyra is over me. I... deserve it. B-but I wish she wasn’t, sometimes.”

Keris’s lips thin. Her arm tightens around Kuha for a moment.

“Old loves... never fully go away, for us humans,” she says eventually, her voice thick. “Even when they’re... out of reach. I know what that’s like.”

They sit in silent commiseration for a moment.

“If you ever need to talk,” Keris adds after a while, “you can talk to me. Yeah?”

Kuha sighs and snuggles closer. “Yeah,” she says, cheeks pink.

* * *

Keris does not sleep well that night. Some of it is because her darling little feather is acting up, keeps on clambering over her mama, and crawls out of bed to start poking Atiya. Who wakes up and starts crying.

But even if Kali wasn't a very naughty little girl, she wouldn’t have been sleeping well. She feels pulled thin. Stretched. Tired and achy and shivery. And she can’t help but think of Haneyl, still naked and feral out there in the jungle. Haneyl loves her fancy clothes. But from what Kuha suggested, she hasn’t worn anything in a month since she stormed out.

And then there’s the dying trees she saw in the Swamp. She really hasn’t wanted to think about them.

So in lieu of doing so, she’s sketching. Her new book is for dream ideas, and she’s made a good start on it - though the giant skeleton idea and the desert of ribbons will probably have to be Ney dreams.

_This_ one, though...

Breathing out, Keris exhales a Gale, who shakes herself loose and frowns. “Urgh,” she mutters. “You’re tenser than you realise, boss. Have fun with Sasi! Give her a kiss from me!”

“You’ll get all the kisses when we recombine,” Keris tells her with an eyeroll. “Look after the babies. And keep Kali away from my skin! I don’t wanna come back to find it shredded. Also, uh, watch from the outside; I wanna know what it looks like when I do this.”

Nodding obediently, her Gale plops down to watch as Keris closes her eyes. She thinks of Sasi, drifts into meditation, and tugs a little on the sense of tar and darkness and...

_the faintest scent of dreamdust_

Blackness.

From the blackness, Keris summons heat, and from the heat she brings the warmth of Sasi’s embrace; her generous curves and her pale complexion. Soon, she has an ivory statue of a gorgeous naked Sasi floating in the empty darkness - and then it’s simply a trick of perspective to make it the size of a mountain; shrinking her dream-avatar down until it can stand on a single fingernail of the mountain-Sasi’s cupped hands. The sky glimmers with Calesco’s stars and the abyss below the statue’s crossed legs is a sea of ribbons in the colours of Sasi’s anima.

Keris puts some finishing touches on the lavish gazebo in Sasi’s cupped palms - the roof glass so that they can look up at the beautiful face high above them. Food and drink take a couple of tries - she’s still not quite got the hang of bringing them into being by remembering the taste as though they were already there - but the smallness of this dream makes it easier to populate this little pavilion with every luxury under the suns. Once she’s got enough to probably satisfy Sasi, she builds up the tension in the dream and lets it go; waiting for her guest to drift off to sleep and land here.

Unfortunately things aren’t quite as smooth as Keris might have liked. A patch of ground sits up, and gasps like someone waking from a nightmare. It sheds its outer covering to reveal the Sasi inside.

“Where... what.... ah!” Sasi gasps. “What’s happening?”

“Sasi! Sasi Sasi Sasi, don’t worry, it’s okay, it’s me!” Keris hastily explains, darting over to her. “It’s me. It’s Keris. I learned how to pull people into my dreams instead of just sending messages through them. This is really me! Like with my painting; but without the risk of people finding it!”

“Bwah?” Sasi blearily blinks at her. “But is this you you or my dream of you?”

Keris considers this. “Uh... it’s me-me, but I dunno how to prove it. I guess telling you something your dream of me wouldn’t know?” She chews on a hair tendril, thinking, then brightens. “Oh! Me and Asarin found an old Shogunate dragoncrawler up in Shuu Mua! It’s _huge_ , Sasi! It had these giant dragon heads on both ends - well, one had kind of exploded, but the other was fine - and they used geomancy to drag all the house-sized carriage things to and from the manses at either end! Did you know those were a thing? It’s _so amazing!”_

She bounces happily, then pouts. “Though,” she grumbles, “half the carriages were blown up or empty, and now Asarin and... uh, everyone, but mostly Haneyl, are fighting over who’s gonna get the stuff inside. Oh, and Haneyl’s also upset because Rathan initiated into sorcery and I had to go back to Saata for a month and she drowned half the valley in jungle that- you’re staring at me.”

“Let’s just say I believe you,” Sasi says, fending off the babbled explanation with her hands. “But Keris, how are you even doing this? How did you turn yourself into such a beautiful dream?” She stoops and caresses the ground. “It’s all you. All of it. It’s almost as beautiful as the City.”

Her eyes drift to the giant statue of herself, and she grins to herself in a way which would be goofy in any other woman. “Is this really how tall you see me?” she teases.

“I think it’s like how I turn into wind,” Keris says slowly, after directing a pouty frown at her for the height crack. “Or how you turn into a shadow. I shuck my skin and become a dream for someone I love.” She leans in to plant a kiss on Sasi’s nose. “Like you. I’ve really been missing you - so I decided to come visit!” Gesturing up at the vast ivory statue above them, she smirks. “Do you like it?”

Sasi rises and wraps her up in a big, soft, warm hug. “I’ve missed you so much, dear heart,” she whispers, eyes dry. Her eyes linger on her statue. “And you’ve been missing me, I see.”

“I really have,” Keris sighs, leaning into her. “It’s been... hard, down in the southwest. Especially without you.” She looks up, touching Sasi’s cheek gently. “How have you been? Are you safe? Are you having trouble up there on the Blessed Isles? You know I can come and help if you need it, if there’s anything I can do.”

“I know, I know.” She sighs, not letting go of her girlfriend. “Things have been busy. Always busy. And tense. But I’ve been safe enough.” She sniffles. “How’ve you and Testolagh and Aiko been?”

“... Aiko’s been doing great!” Keris chirps. “She’s on Shuu Mua with me now, and she’s been spending time with Asarin. I think she’s really opening up with the twins around so much, and she’s made a lot of friends her own age back at my estate on Saata. Still hasn’t got the hang of swimming - she just sort of sinks - but she’s not as scared of water anymore.”

“Oh.” Sasi’s voice hitches. Her eyes widen, and her alabaster cheeks pinken. “That’s wonderful, Keris. I’m so happy she’s happy. I was so worried about leaving her. I’m... I’m so proud of you.” She leans back to look Keris up and down. “Look at you, such a wonderful mother. And aunt.”

Keris blushes happily - and then looks down, shoulders shrinking. “I haven’t been such a good mother to Haneyl,” she admits. “She... she thinks I hate her. Or, well, she did. Now she’s just angry at me. I screwed up.”

“She’s volatile,” Sasi says, guiding Keris over to one of the jewelled benches. “You two are very alike. Unpredictable and mercurial and spontaneous. Why don’t you talk about it, mmm? I’ve dealt with teenagers before.”

Keris sits herself on Sasi’s lap and snuggles into her shoulder, winding her hair around Sasi’s back and starting to give her a light massage. “I guess...” she says, “I guess it started when she and Rathan went down to the southern Anarchy for a season to explore. When they got back, Haneyl was... different.”

It takes a while to explain. By the time she’s done, their overclothes have mysteriously vanished, and they’re lying on the velvet chaise lounge; Sasi on her back with Keris tucked in on top of her.

“... so I did my best to apologise again, and she just scoffed,” Keris finishes. “I left, and went up the mountain to check on Kuha and Aiko in the hot springs. Kuha’s fine, but she misses Haneyl and she’s worried. No clothes, no coming out of the jungle, I don’t think she’s been bathing or even hoarding her treasures right... and for nearly a _month_. I’m worried too.”

Sasi sprawls out like a plump housecat. Her silk negligee is riding up, exposing pale flesh that Keris snuggles into. “She’s bullying you,” she says matter of factly. “She’s using your guilt as a weapon when she’s bitter about Rathan managing the jump first. You’re being too soft on her. One of my daughters ran away from home to punish me for telling her off when she was in her late teens. I made sure she was safe, had her father set a demon on her to track her down, and then let her run out of money and realise that it wasn’t comfortable and that I was right to scold her for hitting her maid with a hairbrush for not having one of her favourite dresses cleaned for a party.”

“I dunno...” Keris says, biting her lip. “She seems really upset about this. And... and there are trees dying in the Far Swamp. I think something’s wrong with her, I just don’t know _what_.” She groans, massaging her temples. “And the twins are causing havoc and Asarin wants some of the dragoncrawler treasures and Zanara is swinging wildly between helping and making things worse, so I haven’t had the time to try and figure it out. I’m just so _stressed_.”

She looks up guiltily. “Sorry. You must be having a hard time too, but I’m just talking about me.”

“I like hearing you talk,” Sasi says softly, wriggling under Keris. Her cheeky hands descend to Keris’s cheeks, giving them an eager squeeze. “It’s nice, easy family things. Like Testolagh - you must tell me about all the fun you’ve been having with him! And Seresa - how is she? I’ve been missing her company! Have you succumbed to her temptations?” 

Sasi’s smile is very naughty.

“Well, she _has_ been helping me with a little cult...” Keris starts, and begins to detail her activities with the Cult of Nululi - though she leaves out exactly who it’s dedicated to; implying that it’s centred primarily around Cinnamon and Seresa.

Inside, though, she’s thinking. _Is_ Haneyl just bullying her? She’s been very pushy since she got back from the Anarchy, that’s for sure. Traits that she’d already had, admittedly - ever since her time with Sasi - but now they’re magnified far out of control. Like that time down south built up her fires and her hunger, and stoked the more toxic bits of her personality. And she hasn’t burnt out since.

... actually... it’s odd. Keris would have expected her to have a burnout over this past month - oh, right, of course. Zanara. Nara had said they’d been keeping her from blowing up; cooling her down to just a low simmer.

Maybe it would have been better if they hadn’t. If they’d just let her blow her top and exhaust her anger. This might all be over by now if they had. But... that’s not fair. They were only trying to help; maybe feeling guilty for provoking her when Rathan’s sorcery had come out.

But yes, Keris muses. Her time with Sasi. That’s when it had started - gods, Haneyl had slept with a _prince of An Teng and his fiancee_ back then! The trip to the Anarchy hadn’t created this... this uncontrolled, poisonous rampancy. It had just amplified it far beyond what Haneyl’s self-control and desire to stay balanced could keep up with.

Sasi can’t read her mind. She misreads what Keris’s silence is about.

“Why aren’t you mentioning Testolagh?” she asks softly. Her shimmering eyes look up at Keris reproachfully. “We had fun together, didn’t we? I want you two to get along.”

Keris sighs. “We did try,” she says. “I promise, we did. And it was...”

She considers, thinking back to that last night.

“... pleasurable,” she admits. “Hot. Sexy. But... Sasi, it didn’t...”

She falls silent again, chewing a hair tendril. “Some of the things he likes,” she starts again. “I... I liked them too. But I didn’t like the... the person liking them was making me into. I got off on... on _humiliating_ him, _hurting_ him. I-I mean, he loved it, we both... uh, enjoyed ourselves. A lot. But afterwards... I didn’t like looking back at who I’d been there. She’s not a person I want to be. She was... she was like Haneyl’s being now. The worse parts of me.”

Looking down and meeting Sasi’s gaze, Keris drops an apologetic kiss on her lips. “I did try,” she swears. “We both did. And we can get along now - especially because he sees that I’m a good influence on Aiko, too. But I don’t think we make good bed partners. Not beyond special occasions where you’re there too.”

She sighs. “He does have a lot of affinity for the King,” Sasi admits. “I... I just wanted it to work. It’s... oh well. I’d rather have you as friends and the you that you are now, than a crueller you.” She wraps her arms around Keris. “I like the way he lets me take charge,” she admits. “But... you mean he wants more things than I give him? Is... is that something new, I wonder. Or did he just find it with you and it was there all along?”

She kisses Keris. “Do you ever worry about what we’re becoming?”

“Not so much?” Keris says. “But, I mean... who I was before, the street rat; that’s what I gave up to gain the Emerald Circle. This is who I am now. A Princess of the Green Sun. None of the powers I’ve learned yet have changed who I _am_ , even if... even if I kind of have demon-bans now, like how an angyalka can’t stop playing. I’m still _me_. They come from who I already was. So it’s not like I’m changing, I’m just getting... more me-er. Right?”

Sasi sighs. “I suppose when you didn’t have much to lose, you don’t miss what you left behind,” she says.

Keris flinches slightly. “S-so!” she says brightly, changing the subject with the approximate subtlety of a charged-up Vali. “Have you been having any successes you want to brag about? Oh, oh, or do you want Aiko stories? I have a bunch of them from around the estate.” She pauses and smirks, her hand creeping up Sasi’s thigh. “Or...”

Sasi giggles. “No one is talking about anything than the throne. I’m backing certain people, to cause confusion if nothing else.  Like Bijar - my cousin.  At the very least, I should be able to get my hands on whatever she finds out about the Imperial Manse... or have you do it, at least.” She looks at Keris’s attention, accurately reading her level of distraction. She kisses Keris on the nose. “Well, oh Queen of Dreams, do you have something more comfortable than this bench?” she inquires.

“I... _imagine_ I could rustle up a bed,” Keris smirks. “Or we could go see the one I already prepared~” She motions further up the great statue, to the hidden door set into the giant Sasi’s navel.

“Well, I suppose...” Sasi drawls. “I think we’ve been mothers together. Time to be women.”

* * *

Keris doesn’t feel as well as she might have liked when she wakes. She’s still feeling exhausted, even after a diverting night with her girlfriend in a land of dreams. On top of that, when she reabsorbs her Gale she has to experience seeing her own body hollow itself out and leave only an empty, eyeless hollow skin.

Which on top of everything else leaves her feeling nauseous at breakfast as she tried to feed an excessively hyper Kali, a very clingy Ogin who’s refusing to cooperate, and a tired and grouchy Atiya who’s glaring daggers at Kali and cries when her big sister touches her.

“Vali!” Kali shouts at the top of her lungs when she sees her big brother. “Kiss kiss kiss!”

Vali jogs over, and sweeps up Keris’s naughty little daughter, swinging her around until she pops into being a hawk chick. “How’re you doing, bestest best little sister?”

“Vali Vali Vali are we going to baths again today?”

“Maybe, maybe.” He looks at Keris. “But I think mama has other plans.”

“I do,” Keris says, between planting worried kisses on Atiya’s cheek and trying to soothe her down for a nap. This does not work, and she gives hair-pantomime a try while she distractedly continues. “I can summon a force of demons from Asarin’s lands at the next full moon to salvage the train, but it’ll be small enough that it won’t be able to salvage the train _and_ fight off a wyldhorde at the same time. We need to cut into the wyldzone and clear it out enough that the chaostide can’t screw us over - not just dipping our toes in as far as the train, but tracking down whatever chaos-lords are at the centre and killing them dead.”

Vali’s eyes light up. “Oh yeah! We’re gonna punch the faeries!”

“He’s been wanting to do that all month,” Asarin declares, sweeping in. She’s at the head of an honour-guard of her armoured demons - Keris can hear the worms squirming within the Malfean plate - and she has gone full... she’s gone full Asarin.

Her hair is up, the fire shaped with iron bands into a crown that frames her head like a sunburst. She wears her armour, something hulking and thick made from her flame that ripples and shifts under the surface. And she wears a mostly-black cloak of Hegran stormcloth, so her overall resemblance is that of a sun breaking through the sky of Hell.

Vali gives her thumb up. “Nice,” he nods. “I’d wear my armour, but it’d blow up if I turned into a dragon and I don’t wanna do that. So instead,” he lowers his voice, “I’m wearing my training chains.”

“Training chains? You finished that idea you babbled at me already?”

“Yeah!” Vali tugs up his sleeves to show the iron chains round - again and again and again - his forearms, and bounces so Keris can hear the jingle of the contraptions in his backpack. He’s carrying an incredible weight, and more than that, there’s counterweights in there so the very act of moving his limbs means he’s fighting against all those mechanisms. He must have built it when Keris was away.

“Oh.” Asarin stares. “How... cute.”

“It’s not cute!” Vali explodes. “You’ll see!”

“It’s adorable,” she tells him with an aristocratic chuckle. “Just like you.”

That draws a pout from Vali, and Kali starts giggling. No one is quite sure why; not even necessarily Kali. She’s just kind of like that.

They’re joined by Calesco, Eko and Aiko soon enough, Eko carrying plates of very small sugary things for, she gestures wisely, ninesies. Which are, according to Eko, like elevensies but two hours earlier.

This only adds to Keris’s problems, as now Kali has been fed sugar by Eko and Calesco, who are big sisters who believe that sugar is a key part of the diet of any child. And for that reason, she’s perhaps a little distracted when the other expected people make their appearance.

Zana is here, shining in hand-woven robes that clearly use the hair of some of the strange wyld beasts Keris has been seeing around. They look almost monk-like, but nothing natural can shift between a deep crimson and an indigo depending on whether she’s moving away from or approaching you. When she stands still it shimmers in many colours, each motion of the cloth causing it to ripple. It’s beautiful, but also makes Keris’s eyes hurt.

But it’s not even that strangeness that draws Keris’s attention most. What she focusses on is the one accompanying Zana, and that’s Haneyl. She’s dressed, at least, dressed in simple cotton, and her hair has been washed. But it’s gnarled and bushy, her cheaply dyed blue cotton is turning yellow-brown from heat, and the only ornamentation she wears is the crown of fire that burns bright green. 

Compared to everyone else here, she looks... plain. Unadorned. Simple - almost peasant-like. Or maybe not quite.

Because the clothing styles are jogging Keris’s memories. Those are Nexan clothes. Cheap Nexan clothes. The kind of thing Keris... had to get from shonky shops when she was living there. The kind of thing that the best you could say was that it maybe kept you warm-ish, mostly. When it wasn’t too cold.

In among the finery, Haneyl stands out for all the wrong reasons. And from the slightly vague look in her eyes, Keris wonders if she even knows what she’s wearing. Because she stands there near the entrance, trembling slightly, clearly itching in the fabric. 

Keris is almost sure Zana must have pestered her into wearing this. And probably made it herself, because she has no idea where you’d even get clothes like that. Not unless Haneyl made it and then... why?

“I’m just here to make sure things are done properly,” Haneyl says, voice soft. She doesn’t look at her mother. 

Unfortunately, that means her eyes fall on Asarin instead, and the demon lord puffs herself up. “Oh, I think we can get things done quite well without you,” she says cattily. “Your talents aren’t needed for this.”

Nara is already there, though, over by Asarin, whispering softly to her. Keris overhears her, hears the reassurance he’s offering. That for all her other flaws, Haneyl is strong and fast and can fortify places against the Wyld with her jungles, so they need her there. That she doesn’t need to like Haneyl, and Keris is there to handle her. And other things, long-practiced things, things that Keris is quite sure meant that Zanara has been priming Asarin with their arguments because he references previous conversations.

Vali is blind to all of this, and cheerfully thumps his sister’s arm. “Good to see you out and about!” he booms happily, grinning. That earns him a hiss through clenched teeth, but he either doesn’t notice or - more likely - doesn’t care. “Bet I’m going to kill more faeries than you!”

And that of course gets her attention. “What do you bet?”

“Hmm. Oi, mama, have you handed us any chores we can gamble with?”

“Scouting patrols, inventory and clean-up,” Keris replies automatically. Her eyes linger on Haneyl in worry. That dress... she shivers. And Haneyl still isn’t looking at her. Still isn’t ready to make up. Just before they go into a Wyld Zone to fight fae lords and divvy up who gets what from the dragoncrawler.

Fuck, she hopes this won’t turn into infighting.

Vali grins. “A week’s chores, then.”

Haneyl narrows her eyes. “Wait. Doesn’t mama not give you things to do because you’re awful at actually doing them?”

“No! I’ve been good while you’re off sulking!” Vali says, sounding somewhat hurt. “I do family things. It’s just when people tell me to do things that I don’t. Of course, if you don’t think you can win...”

“Of course I can win!” Haneyl snaps. “How do we count it?”

“Hmm. Yeah. Faeries do kinda burn up or melt or stuff. That’s a problem.” He scratches his head. “Mmm. I guess we’ll just compare who picks up the flashiest stuff from them.”

His big sister considers that. “Yeah. Judged by...”

“Family vote!”

“... fine.”

“If either of you gets hurt badly enough to need healing, you forfeit,” Keris puts in quickly. She’s seen how her souls born of Sasi can get when they’re in competitive moods. “I don’t want you risking yourselves too badly or breaking off from the plan.”

That earns her two disgusted sighs, which manage to sound nearly identical - and also remarkably similar to Sasi when she’s being huffy.

“Are we done?” Asarin demands. “We’re wasting the day.”

Eko is eventually sent to track down Rathan, and pulls him out of bed and drags her little brother to the meeting place by the hair.

“Ow ow ow!”

Stop being a big baby, Eko gestures with fake sobbing gestures. She puffs out her chest. One Aiko! One Atiya! One Ogin! One Kali! Eko expects all her baby brothers and sisters and cousins back intact, fed, and all the other things! And entertained, too! Rathan mustn’t spend all day on the lewds! He has wholesome baby minds to educate and teach and entertain!

“I was... are you all leaving this early?”

“It’s not early, you’re just lazy,” Calesco says dryly.

“I’m not lazy, I’m...”

“We’re leaving now, yes,” Keris interrupts. “Zanara won’t be here to help you this time, so keep an eye on them all. Aiko?” She crouches down. “I need you to be a big girl and help Rathan look after the twins and little Atiya, okay?”

Aiko nods solidly. “Eko told me how to be a big sister! So being a cousin is like being a big sister! Also, she said to throw water over Rathan if he’s bad and told me where the buckets are!”

Eko brings her hand into contact with her face silently, and shakes her head. Aiko is just too honest.

“Alright,” Keris chuckles, kissing her on the forehead and going over to the twins and Atiya to repeat the process. “Now, Zanara, remember what I said - you stay close to _at least_ two fighters _at all times_ , preferably me.” Keris pauses thoughtfully. “Hmm. Maybe I should leave Iris behind, just to keep an eye on things here...”

Iris lifts her head off the back of Keris’s hand and bites her sharply on the thumb, chirping resentfully.

“Okay okay okay! You can come see the pretty fairies,” Keris sighed. “Rathan, just... keep things under control. And Oula, you have the list of people to send Messengers to if we’re not back within a day and don’t send word or respond?”

Oula, who is in a rather rumbled clinging nightie and out of breath having chased Eko here, doesn’t say much, but just nods.

“Okay then,” Keris nods. Her hair billows up, and she raises Iris up to point. “Move out!”

They’re a ragtag force, but a formidable one. Keris, five of her Progeny souls, Asarin and her guard. Keris stays near the middle of the group with Vali and Zanara, while Asarin and Eko take point. Haneyl and her farisyya lag behind; partly as a rear guard and partly out of avoidance, as Calesco flies a scouting loop along their flanks in short bursts.

Six demon lords, an Infernal Exalt the equal of an Unquestionable in killing might, and two troops of elite First Circle soldiers. Small in number or not; this is a force that could shatter a city with ease.

* * *

 

The wyld-tainted land isn’t so easy to discern at first glance. But Keris can taste the change in the air immediately. The thick, glutinous taste of the world’s potential, the way it could be other - but isn’t, yet. The plants move a little too much, and there are strange colours in the leaves. And then there’s the faint music; distant, strange, heard through a wall.

“I got deeper than this before pulling back,” Asarin says. “This is the outskirts. Just goblins and some of,” she points at a signpost, which says something in High Realm that Keris can’t read, “these things. I think maybe, either the chaos-things here dared to steal the Shogunate style for themselves... which is a sign of some pathetic attempts at taste even if they ruin everything they touch... or perhaps many of them were once human. Or descend from once-humans.”

“Look, look!” Vali says, pointing at a scar in the land. “Asarin, look! It hasn’t grown back, the place we smashed!”

She nods in satisfaction. “Some of the _beasts_ here were trying to sell their food to newcomers. I don’t fall for such tricks and Vali - the cute little boy - helped me smash it up quite thoroughly.”

“It was so cool Asarin hit one with her hammer so hard it went through the wall!” Vali contributes.

Calesco pauses ahead of them, perched on a tree branch like an oversized raven. “Sickle-birds ahead!” she calls down, gesturing. “A pack of six. They look... well, like sicklebirds, mostly. Strange colours, and they look like they have some peacock in them, but... none too different. I think we’ll only be seeing minorly twisted things until we get deeper. They were probably scared off by Vali and Lady Asarin being loud.”

Or Eko’s stabbing, Eko suggests helpfully.

“Once-Creationborn who live on the border aren’t strong enough that we need to worry about them,” Keris decides. “Eko, if the sicklebirds attack, kill them all. And then pass them back; we might as well harvest the feathers. Calesco; what’s playing that music? Can you see a source out here, or is it coming from deeper in?”

“Deeper in!” Calesco reports, neck rotating a little too far as she listens. Eko vanishes off, and up ahead there’s a few birdlike cries before there’s only silence. The wavering grass is painted red up ahead - not because it was growing red naturally, unlike a few trees, but because of her. 

They were probably pets of something that had them trained to run away when they saw innocent ribbon girls, Eko reports cheerfully as she tucks a feather with an oil slick sheen behind Keris’s ear.

((Eko - 3 threshold successes, sicklebirds can’t beat her DV, clear victory))

“Thank you,” Keris smiles, and drops her voice to a sub-murmur. “Maybe give Haneyl some of the feathers too,” she whispers, low enough that only they can hear. “Pretty things might cheer her up.”

She doesn’t look back as Eko vanishes off behind her, instead moving up to take her daughter’s place in the vanguard. “Okay,” she says to Asarin. “You’ve been here before, so you direct and I’ll scout. I can cover ground better. and your troops can clear the way for the others.”

((5+Survival 3+2 stunt=10, invoking Asarin as a partner on the roll. 4 sux.))

Asarin nods. “The signposts direct to a city they call Chir,” she says confidently. “They may just be lies, but they want people to go to this place If we follow them, I believe we will find either a place that exists within this,” she flaps her hand arrogantly, “this mess, or a place they wish to lure us to and will seek to destroy or trap us. But there are far more of us here than they think, so by my reckoning this is perhaps the best way to cut the heart out of this wretched infestation.”

Keris cracks her knuckles. “Signposts it is. Eko! Don’t cut down any signposts; we need them!” She pauses. “Feel free to kill anything else, though! Zanara, up here with me and Asarin; you know the rules.”

Zanara sighs, but hurries to catch up from where they’d been lagging back and talking with... Haneyl and Vali; their new rearguard. Keris can hear them talking about their little bet - they’re holding off doing anything for now and waiting until they reach the city to start counting kills and taking trophies.

Fair enough. She can reshuffle the group once they get there. Right now, Eko as the point of their knife and Keris and Asarin as the blade is more than enough to cut through to the heart of this twisted chaos-place.

The first sign of the changing of the realms is the thinning out of the bamboo and jungle, replaced by waist-high grass. It blows and sways without a breeze. There are insects in the long grass and it is their singing that can be heard from a distance. 

“That’s a Shogunate vop,” Asarin says, frowning. 

“It’s catchy!” Zanara contributes, eyes gleaming. Zana has her Nara-puppet on her back, and her robe is making Keris’s eyes ache with its bi-coloured flickering. “Oh, this is fun, Keris!”

“It’s not catchy! They’re just... they’re making a mess of the beat! These insects can’t hold to a proper rhythm!” Asarin scowls.

The sky overhead is clouded, the sun not there. Instead, there is another light in the sky; something blue that burns overhead and casts its sharp radiance down on the ground. Calesco shifts between the outcroppings of white stone that break the fields, covered in scrawlings in no language Keris recognises. 

There is a city on the horizon that comes into view as they circle a hill. It rises tall, as tall as Eshtock’s ruins. Its roofs are beaten brass; its walls are white stone painted in many colours; thunderclouds hang above and flash down many-coloured lightning.

Keris’s lips purse. “Do you think they know we’re here?” she asks Asarin privately.

“Oh, who knows what these monsters think - or know,” Asarin grumbles, hands tight around her oversized hammer. “This disgusts me! It’s like... a parody!”

Zana’s eyes are bright, but Keris is just thankful she doesn’t say anything.

Up ahead, some kind of horn sounds - and a strange creature approaches. Some kind of oversized insect, perhaps, or... no, it is mechanical, of sorts, with beaten brass. There is a woman sitting in the head of the creature, pulling levers. Her ears are oversized and rabbit-like, she wears a broad-brimmed hat with holes for aforementioned ears, and she’s smoking some kind of cigar.

She calls out something to the people in the road, then makes gestures with her hand as she approaches. 

“This... her dialect is strange, but she demands we get out of the road,” Asarin says. She hefts her hammer.

Keris nods happily. “Oh good,” she says. “No need for subtlety, then.”

She cracks her knuckles. “Boys and girls, there’s the city!” she calls in Riverspeak. “Stay in pairs! Haneyl, Vali, I want a giant hole in that city wall when we get to it; you can compete to see if charging and punching or setting it on fire does more damage! Eko, Calesco, get rid of the road-warden! Zanara, you’re with me and Asarin! Don’t split up, don’t get too far from the rest of the group, and don’t give quarter! We’re here to rout this place!”

She lifts a hair tendril in a ready position to hold Eko and Calesco back, and smiles at Asarin.

“Ready to get rid of some vermin, my friend?” she asks.

“You are ready to attack a whole city?” Asarin asks in mild surprise.

Keris shrugs. “We have almost a full septet here,” she points out. “If we breach the wall dramatically; the lords of that place will come to us. And then we kill them. We’re not here to negotiate or bargain; we’re here to exterminate them. Trying to destroy the whole city would spread us too thin, but breaching it? We have enough force.”

She pauses. “Of course, as my friend and a veteran general of many wars, I’d be glad to hear your- oh, Eko, Calesco!” she calls over the repeated demands of the fae thing on the mechanical insect. “Shut her up already, then come back to decide on how we’re approaching the city!” She turns back to Asarin. “Your expert opinion?”

“I’m not going to just kill her!” Calesco shouts back. “She says we’re blocking her. That...” she drops into High Realm as she asks questions of the chaos-thing, “that she’s got a crop shipment to make and we’re blocking the road.”

“She’s a soul-eating fae thing!” Keris calls back, and then sighs. “Fine, fine. We’ll get out of the road, if it’ll make her shut up.”

It is very unfair, she consoles herself, that so many of her babies understand annoying complicated High Realm when she herself doesn’t. Though she’s not sure exactly when Calesco picked it up. Probably either from Haneyl or through poetry, at a guess.

They get out the way, and the fae... farmer? Whatever she is, her beetle-thing passes by. Oh, it’s a strange contraption - many legs, a skin of brass, and a strange array of crystals and wire on the back.

“It’s a mockery of a cargo beetle,” Asarin says with a sceptical eye. “I doubt it would work out of this... _place_. I don’t even think the legs are attached properly. They’re just floating. It’s like... an idea of a cargo beetle.”

Keris turns sharp eyes back on the city. “So they might have other ideas in there,” she says slowly. “Like ideas of battle-automata. Or warstriders.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Asarin says, hefting her hammer. “And at the very least, they might have some of their monsters armoured up to look like a warstrider. These pathetic parasites are just aping Shogunate aesthetics without understanding anything of the integral beauty of the styles!”

Keris nods absently. “Well,” she muses. “In that case a quick, violent strike is still probably the best idea. Break through the wall and head straight in to whatever’s at the heart of the city. If it’s like the Hungry Mountain was, there’ll be an innermost sanctum where the lords live. We’ll want to get from the wall to there before they can activate any of the big things.”

Haneyl joins her mother, cracking her knuckles and bones. There are more pops than there should be. “You know, it’s a shame that if what Mother taught me is right, most of the wealth of this place will melt into dreams and dry leaves once it leaves,” she says. 

“Dreams are like that,” Calesco calls back. “It’s easy to dream a city into being. Isn’t that right, mama?”

Keris tastes it, suddenly; the wind from the city, the scent of dreamdust. And the cry of a distant bird.

She flinches violently. “Y-yeah,” she manages after a moment. “Yeah. Easy.”

A shiver passes up her spine, and she shakes away the moment of discomfort.

“Alright then; fast assault it is. Asarin, can your troops act as a middleguard and guard our flanks? Haneyl, Vali; once you break the wall, cycle around to the rearguard again. You’re the plug - keep them from flooding us from behind, yeah? If they can’t stop us getting to the palace; they’ll probably try to follow us in.”

There’s a deep growl at the back of Haneyl’s throat. “Not likely. Me and Vali are...”

“... going to fight properly!” he agrees. “Yeah! There won’t be trophies among the trash!”

Keris sighs. “Fine,” she groans. “But at least have your farisyya stay back. Asarin? Do you want to come in for the leaders?”

Asarin glances sideways at Haneyl. “Of course,” she says, with a flick of her vaporous brown hair. “I’m not going to be shown up by a little boy and...”

“And what?” Haneyl snarls.

“A young girl,” Asarin says, managing somehow to both be insulting and also make it clear that that’s not what she’s thinking. “I’ve seen more battles than you’ve lived days, girl. Your mother needs actual expertise, not a hot head.”

“Hag,” Haneyl mutters below her breath.

_“ In that case,”_ Keris interrupts. “Eko, please have a tea party outside and play with all the nice fae soldiers who want to come in and interrupt us. And Calesco, stand watch and ward them off so she doesn’t have to kill too many... innocent fae.” She makes a face, not particularly liking that contradiction in terms, but gives Calesco a pleading look anyway. “If there’s no move to rush us from behind, follow us in, but if someone needs to hold them off; you have the range and Eko has the mobility to do the best job of it.”

Eko gives a cheerful thumbs up, slapping her hand on Asarin’s shoulder. Okay, bestie, she nods, good luck with this! Wish they could be doing things together but they can be gal pals later and then eat tiny cakes and drink sweet things! Don’t let Vali and Haneyl get her down, and look after mama, ‘kay? She pulls out a number of weapons from her ribbons, considering each one and settling on a warscythe. Look, baby sis, we can bond, she gestures, waving at Calesco.  Eko can be all depressing and sad too!  A scythe is basically a bow, right?

“You’re so immature,” Calesco grouses.

The real immaturity is wanting to be mature all the time, Eko counters. So, mama? Ready to go in and kill them all? It’s gonna be fuuuuuuun~


	10. Chapter 10

“Outside sanity, or perhaps in that threshold between madness and shape that some call dreams, lies a city. Chir, city of nostalgia, metropolis of memories! Chir; where white walls rise to kiss the clouds, where brazen roofs reflect a blue-burning star, where the Shogunate never ended. For seven hundred years it has stood; a fairy-tale of a lost age where cargo beetles stride down glass roads and the world did not fall.

“But now demons have come to Chir. For that is the nature of demon-kind; to ruin all dreams and despoil them, to take their hateful time and impose it on possibility, to constrain the beautiful and make all things abide by the ways of the shape-bringers. The tragedy of this world is that the demons always win in time - for time is their creation.

“And so...”

“Zana!” Vali glares down at his younger relative. “Stop blabbering on!”

“I’m setting the scene! It’s important!”

Chir did not expect the demons to arrive as they did, but the land, the people, the soldiers can tell something is wrong. The gates were wide open, but the many-coloured people - long of limb, tall, well-shaped and high-cheekboned - are ill at ease. Despite the fact that many of them look less human than Keris’s forces, they can tell something is wrong as the demons pass under the walls and into this city of white walls, high spires, and endless babble.

Glowing signs flash on and off advertising fae delights. Bright canvases roof market stalls where things of leaves and petals and crystals are sold. Insectoid-creatures with glowing red eyes patrol the streets, gossamer-thin blades at the ready.

“At least stop narrating _out loud_ ,” Keris sighs. “You’ll tip somebody off.” She cracks her knuckles, looking around with pursed lips. “Alright. We’re here to remove this place as a threat to us. Most of these fae aren’t strong enough to be dangerous, so we just need to find the ones that are.”

She nods towards the centre of the city, where the white towers rise high into the sky and strange things that are neither entirely living nor entirely mechanical chitter and throng. “I’d say our best bet for that is at the heart of this place, wherever it is. The story-place within this one. I doubt we can get all the way there without someone raising a fuss, so be prepared for a fight.”

“I was enjoying it,” Asarin says mildly, strutting with her hammer over her shoulders. “I particularly like the bit where we always win. Very well, hmm.” She points down the broad thoroughfare. “That looks like it’s emulating the layout of a late-era boulevard, so that’ll probably lead us straight to the central business district and the administrative redoubt.”

She’s not wrong there - the street, lined with pink-leaved trees, is straight and broad and wide, with gardened towers rising above it. The strange crowds thronging the streets are whispering now, and pointing at the figures who so boldly walk their way down the centre of the road. 

It’s one of the glowing-eyed beetle-men who first interacts with them. He - or maybe she, because there’s a hint of breasts to the white carapace of their chest - holds out their hand, the other on a sheathed sword that crackles with lightning. “Papers!” he demands, in heavily accented and strange-sounding Firetongue.

Keris glances at Asarin. “Last time someone asked me that, it did not go well,” she admits in Old Realm. “Do you think you can talk your way past him?”

“Some dumb _creature_ like this?” Asarin scoffs. “It wouldn’t surprise me if this wretch was too stupid to trick.”

“... point,” Keris sighs. “Well then, boys and girls. Looks like the violence is starting early.”

Stepping forward, she draws the twin curving blades of Ascending Air with a flourish. “We don’t need papers,” she replies, switching back to Firetongue that the fae can understand. “Stand aside - or take us to your leaders. I demand an audience.”

“Really, mama?” Calesco mutters, one hand on Eko’s sleeve so she doesn’t just stab it. “You have all of Rathan’s tricks and _this_ is what you fall back on?”

((Per + Pres to intimidate))  
((4+5+3 Prince of Hell Style+2 stunt=14. 5 sux.))

Busy striking an intimidating pose, Keris declines to answer her - though if she were going to, she would definitely be able to give all her well-thought out tactical reasons that aren’t just the fact that it’s a fae thing and probably deserves stabbing on general principle.

((MDV 3, “My Duty 4” - Keris fails))

The creature steps back and emits a shrill whistle that’s painfully loud and has Keris and Eko flinching away. Eko lashes in and cuts it clean in two with her scythe, but even as it falls - spraying out scarlet blood like a fountain - there are more whistles sounding from all over the city.

“Good job,” Haneyl says sullenly, sounding pure exasperated teenager. The doors to the grand houses are bursting open and more of these insects are pouring out, festooned with strange tubular weapons made of leaves and sparkling swords. In fact, there’s impossibly many appearing, because a small box that stands in the street releases ten or more when there’s no way they could have all fit in there. And that’s not all. There’s the sounds of gigantic wasps in the air. The ground shakes too, and Keris can hear quickly approaching walkers; some many-legged like the cargo beetles, others clearly much louder and larger.

“Who _cares?_ ” Keris snaps at her. “We came here to fight, and now we get to fight! It’s not like anything depended on doing this stealthily! Why _not_ just skip all the pointless sneaking around and do what we came here for?”

Eko raises a hesitant finger, wondering if mama is entirely talking about killing the faeries anymore, because that sounds kinda like-

_“Just find the leaders!”_ Keris roars, and throws herself at the nearest group of insects in a whirlwind of bladed death.

Things get bloody from thereon in.

There, Eko and Calesco show who their other mother is. Eko is a spinning dervish spouting gore, blood spraying over the white-armoured crowds as she reaps a scarlet toll. Her body is never in one place from moment to moment; crimson winds flickering from here to there wreathed in lightning crackles as she cuts and cuts and cuts. Calesco is the shadow beside her, and while Eko leaves death behind her, Calesco leaves death wherever she looks. Her red sash is off and her bow is stringed with Adorjan’s gift. The arrows leave five, ten, twenty thickly swarming insect-men pinned to walls and piled up, tracked in crimson gore. White hair hangs out of the back of her veils and starlight twinkles with each movement.

In this moment, among this bloodshed, they are sisters and their hearts are full of their mother’s glee.

Brown fire flares, spilling out in waves that cut at chest height as Asarin swings her hammer. The ground shatters under its blows, and burning geysers tear up from the ground. Her hulking armoured guards are behind her in a triangular formation and they fight in perfect unison, shields presented to the world.

Haneyl is in the midst of her own inferno, when it gutters and she goes down. Blades stab into her side as she gasps on the ground, hands twisted into claws. Then Vali is there in black lightning and a shockwave that bursts the crowd around her, detonating them like paper lanterns. 

“Aww, come on, don’t lose so quick,” he says.

“I didn’t need your help!” Haneyl snarls, her hand pressed to her bleeding side. The fae things are weak, and her skin is hard, but they are many and now her blood is staining her cheap clothes.

“Oh yeah?” Vali tosses the cargo-beetle leg he’s carrying throw a crowd. “Then why aren’t you winning?”

“Sh-shut up! She’s running off!”

Because Keris is up ahead, and she is a pyre of bloody light and a typhoon of slaughter. Her gestures bring up thorned bushes that block off where the white-armoured figures are coming from; her twin wave blades a cloud of death. Corpses litter the ground wherever she goes and insect-men die by the dozen. She moves like a sinuous thing; every motion a lie that defies prediction and leads her victims to stumble and stagger in confusion. Nothing touches her as her knives and her hair and her thorns claim lives like grains of sand through an hourglass; less a woman and more a reaper come to bring an end to the city of chaos.

She doesn’t fight alone, either. Zana is with her, small but wielding a strangely humanoid blade - and fighting like one of the masters from the dojos of Saata. The blood drips from Nara, and she spins him in hypnotic patterns that make the eye water and the stomach lurch as he cleaves through armour and flesh.

“See! I told you I could do this!” Zanara calls out.

((oh my god of course zanara fights using their other body as a weapon))  
((As Sakura would say, a sword is a work of art.))

Keris leaps over their head, tackling a taller, red-cloaked beetle-man. This one takes more to kill. Then comes a rain of crossbow bolts from afar, and her knives form a wall, picking them from the air.

“Fine, point taken!” she yells back, running up the front of a combat walker, her arms flickering and blurring into a hazy mess of afterimages that leave its chest covered in hundreds of rents and stab marks. The scent of blood is thick in the air - from around her, from behind her, from either side; it’s an almost tangible thing that soaks the atmosphere in sanguine gore.

“Where are they getting orders from?” she yells, frustrated. “Where are the ones in _charge?”_

The buildings here are lower, and she can see the trees growing on top of them. The brass shimmers and gleams, reflecting the low sun-like star that hangs over this unnatural city.

“It’s the story, Keris,” Zana shouts back, as she showily uses Keris’s own Snake Style to plunge the demon-blade Nara through the helmet of a four-metre insect. She surfs the colossal armoured figure to the ground, splattering its blood over a wall with a flick of Nara. Three lesser insect-men collapse writhing as their bodies twist and change at the sight of the profane sigil it paints. “The story is we’re being pinned down by lots of them until...”

But Keris already hears it. The giant wasps are here, grey-shelled, spitting caustic venoms which hiss upon the ground. And Keris could outrun that, but Zanara can’t. She’ll need to outrun them, until she can find a place to ambush them - or pull back and lead them to Calesco, but that’d be a further delay.

Hissing in frustration, Keris hurls a hapless insect-man in the general direction of the wasps and curses her lack of range. Or flight. Either would be helpful now. Hells, her lack of both is part of why Calesco exists as she does...

... urgh, but while the delay makes her want to bite through something in fury, she can’t risk Zanara. Scooping her youngest soul up in her hair, Keris guts a platoon, neatly dodges a spray of acid, and backs off towards the whistle of arrows and the laughter of the wind. Zana under her arm, legs pumping, she leaps up to the roofs. The acid melts through the brass and ruins the gardens around her. Hissing it dissolves the ornamental ponds and bridges that sit between the brass domes. Keris slides over the pole between two buildings just before it gives way, sprints up a taller building, and throws herself between two structures just as the one behind her explodes.

It explodes because of the silent arrow that’s just punched up through it and torn through the structure, its supports, the garden on top of it, and two of the insects. There’s a moment as the world seems drawn in towards the crimson line that tears its way up to the heavens... then more arrows come, this time white, and the oversized insects fall.

“What are you doing back here?” Calesco shouts, hair anchoring her onto a red-painted crane as she draws and releases. “Are you lost, mama?”

“I can’t stab things I can’t reach!” Keris shouts back. “Thanks for the save!” She sets Zanara down and clears out the area around the bottom of the crane with a few brutally efficient sweeps; hair hiding hooks and knives that open throats and tear out eyes. “Have you got eyes on the others? Or any kind of leader?”

Calesco points at the pyre of mixed brown and green flame that’s rising over towards the central towers. “I dunno,” she says, breathing heavily as she shakes out her arm. “I’m looking for Eko. She got separated when the things that sprayed blue flame walked in!”

Keris hisses in frustration, hopping up next to her daughter to take a quick breather. “Fine. I’m going to see if Asarin and Haneyl have found anything useful - do you need support?”

“These things aren’t people,” Calesco says. She meets her mother’s eyes. Behind her dark veils, her eyes are filled with stars and her hair is white. “Once I get back to Eko, I’ll be fine. Those...” she nods over to the fallen building, “those arrows take a lot out of me. But my sis will keep me safe.” There’s an odd note of trust in her voice that Keris doesn’t think she’s ever really heard from Calesco when talking about Eko before.

Keris nods once, fiercely. “I’ll yell for her to make her way back to you on my way over there,” she says. “She might hear over the battle. Or she might have seen you take out the ships.” Leaning over, she presses a quick kiss to Calesco’s cheek. “Stay safe.”

That said, she kicks off and plummets back down to ground level, running down the skeleton of the crane to where Zanara is taking apart another squad both literally and psychologically. Scooping them up again, Keris sets off over the rooftops towards the multi-hued pyre and the distant booms.

It’s hard fighting back to the pyre of swirling flames. Bodies lie scattered all around - and yet still they come. Endless, faceless, red-eyed beetle-men. They don’t show fear. They don’t live long enough to show fear. They throw themselves at Keris and Zana, even though they die bloodily to punches and kicks and sweeps of hair.

The fire is coming from what was once a marketplace. Now it is an inferno. The fires have consumed the stalls, and their fancy displays burn like tar-soaked sailcloth. There are plants sprouting from the ruins, hungry barbed ones that channel the insect-men into the killing fields. Entire sections of the ground have been torn up, showing hidden catacombs and stairs and tunnels - but more foes spill out from them. The burning wreckage of three giant bugs lie, consumed in green. Haneyl is on her knees, panting, while Vali dashes from place to place, grinning like a maniac as he drags one of their hilariously oversized swords around. 

“Keris!” Asarin shouts, from the safety of her - depleted - guard. Some of her armoured demons have fallen, crushed or split open by the sheer numbers. “Where have you been?”

“Killing!” Keris yells. “There’s no end to these things! Where’s the centrepoint?”

“I think we’re being mazed!” Asarin roars. “Those swine! This is the third identical marketplace they’ve led us into!”

Keris pushes through to meet her, setting Zanara down beside their big sister. “I can drown the waypoint if I have to,” she pants. “Flood the whole thing with Kimbery or Metagaos like I did in the Northeast. If nothing else that’ll stop the fucking insect-men. Or we can just set the whole damn place on fire. Best way to get out of a maze is to break it, right?”

“You...” Haneyl gulps down air, red-stained clothing hanging off her much-slimmer frame. She’s burned off her fat, and now she’s built like a taller version of Keris. How Keris was just after she was Chosen, even. “You think we really have... what, quarter of an hour to get a proper jungle started?”

“We’d be doing better if you stopped falling over and stuff?” Vali shouts over.

“Shut up!” she shouts back.

Asarin’s fists ball up. “I won’t retreat from these-” she begins.

“Ah ha!” The archaic Firetongue booms from the walls; a woman’s voice. “So almost all the rats are here! Men of the Chir Defence Force, you have done well against that extradimensional invasion from the Hell-Realm of Malfeas! Maintain a quarantine zone! Strike Team Gaarda is coming! And let me tell you, demons, you will know defeat!” 

“You will know humiliation!” A boy, or a deep-voiced woman. 

“You will burn in your sins!” A booming man.

“Because,” all three say together, “that’s the Gaarda Way!”

((oh my god it’s the ginyus))  
((nonsense alif this is not sentai))  
_((They are literally giving a Ginyu speech._ I’m expecting a Ginyu _pose.))_

“What,” Keris says blankly as the echoes die away, “the fuck?” She sways to the side and decapitates another armoured insect-men, mostly on reflex. That had sounded more like a speech from a Nexan comedy play than from actual soldiers.

“Don’t ask me,” Haneyl wheezes.

“So tacky,” Zana agrees, wiping the blood off Nara and shaking him with an odd motion that somehow leaves him as a heavy-bladed spear.

Vali laughs to the sky. “Show your face! I’ll take you all on! You’re talking about your power, but trust me, my strength hasn’t even reached maximum yet! I’m still growing! I’ll break you all!”

With a weary chuckle, Asarin shakes her head. “He’s such an adorable child. Not at all like his big sister.”

“Shut your face, bitch-tits,” Haneyl growls.

“Calesco and Eko got separated - last I saw her, Calesco was trying to find her again for support,” Keris says, taking advantage of the brief lull. “I’m tired but they haven’t landed any serious blows yet. How’s everyone else?”

“I’m fine,” Haneyl snarls.

“So fine that my kills quite outnumber yours,” Asarin contributes. “And Vali is doing rather better than you, too.”

“Wow,” Zana says softly, her hand going to her mouth. “Oh my.” She giggles. “Well, me and Keris are doing really well. And Calesco and Eko have killed _tonnes_. Like, so many. So many you wouldn’t believe it. Streets literally running with blood.”

Now that Keris is looking at her, the blood spattered on Haneyl isn’t all insectoid. She can smell her daughter’s own blood staining the cheap blue cotton, and takes a step towards her in concern.

“You’re hurt-” she starts, eyes widening.

“I said I’m fine! It’s just shallow! It was one of those giant bugs!”

“So giant it was shorter than you,” Asarin interjects, leaning on her hammer.

Haneyl thumps the ground. “Shut the fuck up or I’ll show you what the difference between endless waves and me is!”

“Gaarda!” Keris shouts, opting to hastily change the course of the conversation rather than let this go any further. “We’ve been slaughtering your pathetic men like the bugs they are! Come out and face us, or we’ll burn the city and salt the earth! Or are you cowards too scared to show yourselves to your betters?”

The answer is shrieking blue fire, falling from the star. The wave of heat is sudden.

But it’s also off-target. It sets the buildings surrounding the square ablaze, melting stone like wax and leaving brass running in rivulets into the ruined market, but none of it lands anywhere near the demons.

Vali beats his chest with his fists. “That all you got?”

Three stars fall, growing larger and larger all the time. They impact down on the square, punching through. And then they rise up from the ground, unfolding like children’s toys; five metres tall each. The first is blue, sleek and predatory, an oversized spear held in both hands. The second is yellow, and that one despite its size lugs around a heavy weapon almost as large as itself. And in the centre is the red titan, holding a blade that’s taller than Sasi as a shortsword and an oversized shield.

“Team Gaarda has landed!” the centre one announces. “Gaarda Red! I will fight to protect this city! For the Shogun! For the Blue Star!”

“Gaarda Blue!” the woman says. “Precise and deadly, the bane of my foes! The city is under my protection! For the Shogun! For the Blue Star!”

“Gaarda Yellow!” says the one with the massive essence cannon. “I am death! I am flames! The city will stand! For the Shogun! For the Blue Star!”

Keris can taste the mad, bubbling potential roiling and boiling off them. And yet - they’re weak demon lords in strength. Fresh, her children would be stronger - but they’re not fresh. And Red is stronger than the other two.

((Wyld Essence - Yellow and Blue are E5, Red is E6))

“Striders,” Asarin breaths. “Real ones. Or maybe ones that were once real.”

“I can handle the red one alone,” Keris mutters as the two groups size each other up. She glances around. Her friends and children are tired - but they also have a two-to-one advantage against the remaining pair. “Haneyl and Vali, Asarin and Zanara - can you take the other two?”

Something’s nagging at her quietly. The ‘Blue Star’. Is that just some symbol that these things champion, warped from what it was in life? Or is it something bigger and nastier lurking behind these once-striders? She can’t hazard a guess right now, and sets it aside to focus on their foes – but it still worries her.

Haneyl slams the ground, pulling herself - shakily - to her feet. “I can take one all on my own,” she growls.

“Me too!” Vali contributes. 

Asarin sighs. “Zana, stick with me,” she orders. “I’ll deal with this big stupid fat yellow one who’s _flaunting_ their lewd yellowness. Those two can fight over the blue one, then.”

Zana nods. “All right, Lady Asarin!” she says helpfully. “Whatever you say!”

Keris grins. Her hair billows out like a bloody-hued banner.

“Well then,” she says, stretching. “I suppose I better teach this interloper not to steal my colour, huh?”

And she breathes out.

Her flesh dissolves. Her skin peels away into ribbons as the muscle beneath it evaporates. Her bones slot away into whatever place Eko keeps hers, and her blood mists out around her as a scarlet wind. From an eyeless face, indistinct and formless, the wind smiles.

And then, gaining form and clarity in motion, she charges at the central titan as the red-and-silver whirlwind around her flares anew.

The first blow is a brutal overhead chop with a sword longer than Keris. She flows aside as it cleaves through the ruins of a cargo beetle. She’s like a ghost, shifting in place, never in one place for too long. She’s almost playing with this thing, as she anxiously watches Asarin draws the fire of the essence cannon. Many of her demons die, but Asarin herself is safe – and, ah, Zanara wasn’t there. Zanara is getting behind the pondering yellow strider.

And then there’s the crash boom as Vali slams into the leg of the blue strider, sending it flying backwards. It’s trying to stand on him, but he’s just grabbed onto its leg and - oh, there’s Haneyl, fist burning green as she goes for the other leg. The spear forces her back, though - and that allows it to focus entirely on Vali. A kick into a wall crushes him between it and the leg, and when it draws back he’s slumped in a little pile.

Keris gets serious all of a sudden. Very serious. And she slides off the arm which had been holding the sword, sending it spinning off along with a spray of fingers and a slice of both palms. The blade sticks in the ground, vibrating. Gaarda Red screams, many-coloured blood squiring from the squirming flesh that’s revealed under its sundered gauntlets.

With its weapon out of its hands, the great lumbering thing can’t fight back against her. And that lets the wind move in close. Bone-porcelain waves flash out from the ephemeral red shape as she dances around its legs, cutting and cutting and cutting at the gaps in the armour; the places where her knives can slip through and rend muscle and bone and tendon to cripple this thing and bring it down.

She doesn’t stop there. This thing, part flesh and part machine, part real and part dream; it bleeds. It tries to swing at her with its shield, but that’s a slow clumsy thing. And Keris is neither slow nor clumsy.

It falls, bleeding torrents of rainbow blood.

In the background, the yellow strider’s cannon finally finds Asarin and she stands ignited in a corona of sizzling madness. She screams, collapsing to the ground - and then the cannon beam is cut off. Zanara scaled the back of the thing, and now she’s in front of its eyes. She’s got paint and now its eyes are totally covered with her work. It twitches and spasms, spinning and screaming, trying to throw her off while the cannon fires randomly.

Snarling, Asarin pulls herself to her feet. Her cloak is burned off, her armour shattered, her flesh covered in painful welts. But she has her hammer and spinning she tosses it.

Like a comet it flies out. It strikes the yellow machine-creature in the chest and it topples backwards, shaking the ground. Zana leaps free, and spins Nara around her head, the long-bladed spear turning into a vicious war-pick of horn and shell. An eye blinks on the weapon.

And the ground shakes. And the ground shakes again.

Haneyl explodes forward, trailing green flame, and slides under the spear thrust. She’s up the shaft, and her bare foot strikes the helmet, spraying embers all over the place. She hasn’t got a weapon, but she doesn’t care as she screams, each limb a gnawing mouth, her hair a pyre. 

And the ground shakes one more time.

Vali rises. And grows. And grows.

The thunder-wyrm rises, legless, armless, wings sparking. Its flesh is stone and its wings are metal. Chains shatter and break as black-edged lightning arcs across its hide.

And it smashes into Gaarda Blue. It accepts the spear thrust that scrapes along its skin and draws gouts of blood. Because its breath is thunder and lightning lashes the square. Black clouds blot out the blue star.

Haneyl is thrown free, and the wyrm tears the strider limb from limb, then crushes its torso between its jaws and pounds it flat with its horns. 

Vali roars his victory to his clouds, lit by thunder.

The wind sees, and laughs, and digs its blades into the prone form of Gaarda Red. It still has its arms - crippled and maimed, with fingers missing and hands reduced to mangled things of squirming flesh, but great clubs nonetheless. They’re not enough, though, to stop a cutting Gale that dances around its clumsy flailing to pry open the base of its enormous helm and flay the maddened thing inside.

But there’s not the fight she thought. Not quite. Because the chest opens out, and out steps a man. Just a man. Or maybe a thing that was once a man. He’s bleeding, his helmet falling off, but he has a daiklaive of jade - or maybe something that used to be jade.

“You killed her,” he says, voice numb with horror as he watches Vali take out his rage on the flattened thing that was Gaarda Blue. “We served together. Served for so long. Servants of Ontara. Save the city. Serve the Blue Star.” He stands against the red wind, sword in a shaking hand.

The wind laughs mockingly.

“Worry not,” it says in the shifting whisper of a thousand breezes. “I’ll send you along to join her soon enough.”

The white wave-blades flicker out, reflecting the lightning. And the scarlet gale rushes down on the once-great protector of Ontara.

He doesn’t try to block. He doesn’t try to dodge. And that fools the wind. She guards her life so closely, she thought everyone else would.

She stabs a dozen times and a dozen times again; phantom blows striking him from every angle as her limbs move faster than sight. He cuts only once. And at the end of it, he’s there, bleeding from a hundred wounds. And she’s there, his sword in her side, bleeding red and white ribbons which pool down on the ground.

He doesn’t say a thing. But his slit-open mouth looks like it’s smiling.

He drops to his knees, oozing blood that was once red. This thing, this once-man, this soul-eating monster as powerful as a demon lord. Breath wheezing. Oozing. 

His sword falls.

In her right hand, the wind catches it; the curving blade of Ascending Air flickering away to leave her hand free.

And from her left hand, something emerges.

A hundred black shapes rise off the ribbons of the wind’s left arm. They are neither ink nor paint nor embroidery; blocks of solid colour that hang in the air and form a shape. Opal fire burns in the dragon’s eyes, and it clutches a four-part rainbow flame in its claw. Its wings expand - half a metre across - and its graceful neck turns to the dying fae.

Faster than the wind can react, Iris pounces.

Her mouth opens wide - wide, _wide_ , wider than flesh would be able to. The abstract shapes that make up her form shift and flow, revealing rows of fangs within her maw along with a forked tongue. She darts in with startling speed, engulfing Gaarda Red’s head in her jaws, and _inhales_ with an effort that brings her wings up and inflates her chest from the strain.

Like fabric unravelling from a loom, the once-mighty hero dissolves. His essence is drawn up in a many-coloured stream into the dragon’s body, and the occult flames of her eye and witch-pyre flare as she consumes him in the moment of his demise.

When there’s nothing left of him, she shrinks back down again, coiling herself around the ribbons of the wind’s left arm without retreating into them once more. The wind is staring at her - and she cheeps a happy smile at her mother with a puff of rainbow fire.

Keris is, perhaps unsurprisingly shocked. So shocked she barely notices as Zana sprints over to the fallen yellow strider, and brings down her demon weapon Nara onto the cockpit, punching right through.

Then Zana freezes up, petrifying with a smirk on her face and Nara is... inside.

Brightly coloured blood sprays out from the holes.

Vali proudly smashes his head into the wreckage of Gaarda Blue one last time, and shrinks down, collapsing. An uncanny hush falls on the battlefield. Only the crackle of fire can be heard.

A vast and oppressive weariness weighs down on Keris. She feels her flesh resolidify around her bones, and her ribbons weave back together into skin. Pain flares on her side, and she clenches her wound shut with a grunt.

Then, as the weariness doubles down, she sways a little and falls to her knees.

“That,” she murmurs to Iris tiredly, “was not being well-behaved. And we are going to talk about it later.” She glares at the smug little dragon. “S’that why you insisted on coming along on this trip? Were you planning this?”

Iris considers this, and burps out a jet of flame. It doesn’t take shape. It was probably just a burp.

Haneyl is approaching. She’s burned her clothes off and torn what she didn’t burn. She’s got dried blood covering parts of her body - baked on by her heat. Her daughter looks just as exhausted as Keris herself, and sullen and angry on top of that. She’s carrying an equally naked Vali who’s already scabbing over from the ugly gash that runs from his chest all the way down to his thigh - that last spear thrust from Gaarda Blue. Fortunately he looks unconscious, because his leg is twisted the wrong way and his breathing is crackling.

“Here,” she says. “Stupid idiot broke his leg. I can’t believe him!”

“Vali!” Keris cries, then winces and whimpers as her own wound flares with pain. “Here, let me look at him. Are _you_ okay? No other injuries?”

Haneyl lays her brother down, and casually picks up the fallen blade that Red had used. “I wove the cuts shut,” she said. “And nothing’s broken. I’m just hungry.” Despite her words, she’s glaring at Keris, at Vali and the fallen Yellow. “This is a mess. You fucked up the planning here. Not that you did any. Which is kind of the problem.”

“We won, didn’t we?” Keris defends. “They’re dead, and we can probably haul the striders out and salvage them, if they’re not too thoroughly chaos-tainted.”

“We were meant to be going after whoever was in charge here.” Haneyl kicks the fallen red strider. “These weren’t people in charge. They were... lackeys. You know, like Asarin compared to the Unquestionable.”

“For your information, you insolent brat,” Asarin snaps back, having heard it, “I am a dignified lady and I am honoured to serve the souls of those who made the world.” Zana scurries up behind her, having had to stop being Nara to get out of Yellow. “While you are a naked slattern and...”

“Your tits are hanging out,” Haneyl points out smugly.

Asarin blushes bright red, protecting herself with her free hand. “That has nothing to do with it!”

“What, that I’m naked because my clothes couldn’t survive the fight? You’re doing the same thing! All your fancy armour got busted by that cannon.”

“Ladies, ladies!” Zana contributes. “Please, no fighting. Don’t start arguments! You’ve got so much in common. You’re both mostly naked!”

That just intensifies the glare between the two of them.

“And,” Zana adds helpfully, “neither of you got a kill on one of those idiots! Me’n’Keris’n’Vali did! But you didn’t! So you can bond over that!”

“They were talkin’ about a Blue Star,” Keris mutters. “F’they’re the big whoever in charge around here, where the fuck are they? We just slaughtered their best.”

Asarin looks up. “The glowing blue thing in the sky?” she suggests.

“Well, I can’t get up there,” Haneyl says, glowering at Asarin.

“Shame,” Zana says. “Maybe you two could see who gets the finishing blow on them. Because as it stands,” she yawns, and perches herself up on one of the charred remains of a market stall, “we still don’t know who’s better. I mean, we know Vali beat both of you - no hard feelings, Hanny - but it’s just... it’s so hard to compare your power levels, you know?”

“Zana,” Keris mutters with a mild frown, but she’s too tired to get in their way and mediate like she normally would. Instead she just tilts her head back and stares assessingly at the star. Haneyl’s right. None of them can get up there. Maybe Calesco... but she’s off fighting the fae. And even if she saw the battle and came over to support them, she’s exhausted - and a single demon lord, while this Blue Star is likely to be stronger than the Gaardas were.

“We... took out their best, today,” Keris mutters. “Whatever the star is, s’obviously not one for direct fightin’. We can pull back for now, go home an’ rest. Scout the dragoncrawler while they’re recoverin’.”

“Yes,” Asarin says, arm still clutched protectively to her chest. “I lost some solid guards today. Next time we can do things properly - more than a jaunt with children.”

“Oh, blah blah blah, children,” Haneyl flares, glowing green. “I have had it up to here with your attitude!”

“My attitude?” Asarin squares up to her. “As opposed to yours? You pretend to be a princess, but you’re just... awful! Awful in every way! I don’t even see how Eko is related to you!”

“Oh no, no, don’t fight!” Zana chips in. “We don’t need more violence. I mean, whoever lost this would be the loser. The weakest one out of all of us! It’d be just awful to be them, right?”

“Zana,” Keris says more warningly. “Haneyl, Asarin, please...”

She tries to get up, but hisses as her wound spikes again. Urgh, whatever that weapon was, it left something nasty and painful in the gash - and it feels like it broke a rib, too. More than that, she’s _exhausted_ , inside and out. Despite the brewing fight, she just can’t muster the energy to get up and stop it.

“You of all people don’t get to talk to me like that,” Haneyl growls at Keris.

“Honestly! How _rude_ of you to speak to your greater self like that,” Asarin says. She laughs behind her hand. “But perhaps that’s to be expected of a _fake_ princess like yourself.”

And that is when Haneyl punches her. Or at least tries. Because Asarin knocks her fist out of the way with an open-handed slap, sinking down into an easy martial arts stance.

“Little girl,” Asarin says, without even moving the hand that’s maintaining her modesty. “You are much too early to try something like that. Maybe that’ll work in a thousand years. Or three, in your case.”

Haneyl responds to this by sweeping her leg around and bringing Asarin down to the ground with a heavy thud that knocks all the air from her lungs. Then she pounces on the Hellish demon lord, pummelling her with powerful overhead blows. With a rush of flame, Asarin ignites, searing Haneyl and forcing her back - but she too ignites in her own halo of thick, glutinous pale green flame.

Haneyl steps in, clawing at Asarin’s hastily raised arms. This time she’s having to fight properly, and she lashes out with a knee, slamming into Haneyl’s thigh and sending her staggering back. She can’t advance, though, as Haney’s range and extra limbs give her the real advantage here.

“I hate you! I hate you and your smug fake laughter!” screams Haneyl as her hair grabs for Asarin’s limbs. “You’re not better than me! Stop being like this!”

Zana shifts in place, to move in front of Keris as she moves to intervene.

“Don’t. She needs to get it out!” Zana is smiling. “Get it all to the surface.”

“Get _what_ out?” Keris hisses, trying and failing to force herself upright. It feels like she’s got lead weights tied to her limbs. Big ones. And a sword still lodged in her side. Not only that, but Zana is either a lot stronger than she looks, or disturbingly good at martial arts that involve leverage and locks, because she’s got most of Keris’s hair caught up somehow between her hand and a pincer-like claw.

“It’s a suuuuuuuurprise,” Zana sings, as in the background Asarin and Haneyl pound on one another. Asarin splits Haneyl’s lip with a precise jab, but Haneyl leaves red gashes down her arm from fingers that bite.

Next to Zana, Nara is stirring - and he looks almost human. Almost. Except he’s silver-skinned and no normal hair is that shade of cinnabar red. But Zana isn’t vanishing into artwork. They’re just both... watching the fight, as Haneyl gets more and more frustrated at how she can’t break Asarin’s guard. At how the other woman is clearly a better technical fighter, even if she doesn’t have the reach or the hair-limbs.

“I hate you!” she screams at Asarin.

“What is your problem?” 

“That you get to be a better princess!” Haneyl’s teeth lengthen, her jaw lengthens, and she’s growing larger. Much, much larger. Her skin is breaking out in grey scales as she collapses down to all fours. Asarin backs away, already outsized by the monstrous form - that is growing and growing, breaking through the ruins of the burning market, smashing aside the fallen striders.

With a snarl, she lunges for Asarin, spewing green flame. The sticky, hungry fire coats the fallen form of Gaarda Red - but can’t get past it, can’t consume it. Asarin throws herself over it, as the fire licks at her, and reaches into her hair...

... only for the teeth to close around her. The False Sun is pulled up into the air, trapped in the jaws of a crocodile-dragon, who’s biting down. She screams out, trying to hold the teeth back with one hand while the other grabs for something, anything.

Zana smiles. Nara smiles. Zanara smiles.

And out comes the hammer, drawn from Asarin’s hair, and she brings it around into Haneyl’s jawline. There’s a sickening crunch of bone, and Asarin drops out of her mouth down onto the half-melted stone. Haneyl bellows, lashing out with claws rather than her teeth - oh, no, those claws are teeth too, her forelimbs are biting things - but Asarin smashes the first limb when it reaches for her and Haneyl collapses from the pain.

Keris can’t look. And it’s only when she glances away that she realises that Zanara isn’t in front of her anymore.

They’re running towards the fight, hand in hand.

She watches. That’s all she can do, frozen by pain and exhaustion and soul-weariness and shock. Keris watches, heart in her mouth, as her youngest soul charges into a battle that her daughter is losing. Badly.

Zanara is the unexpected variable. The never-expected one. The one who set all this up.

And so Asarin doesn’t see them coming. Nara punches her in the kidneys, and when she collapses in pain, coughing up her last meal, Zana hits her over the back of the head with a plank of wood she picked up from a broken stall. Nara peels back her eyelids professionally.

“Out cold,” they say in unison. “Good.”

“She’s going to be furious when she wakes up,” Zana says.

“We can talk her around,” Nara says. “Or say it was a faerie.”

“Better you-us than me-us,” Zana says. “Hey, hey, hey, Hanny, we’re here. It’s okay. We took her down.” She squeezes Nara’s hand tight. “Come on, cous.”

“Come on, big sis,” Nara agrees. “It’s all okay. We’re going to help.”

“That was _my fight!”_ snarls Haneyl, her voice deep and monstrous and distorted almost beyond comprehension by her broken jaw. But she looks confused, taken off-guard by their sudden appearance and Nara’s reasonableness. The orchid-petal ruff around her neck settles back down, and the glow of her eyes and in the back of her throat dies down. “You shouldn’t have interfered,” she slurs, still resentful.

“We know, we know,” murmurs Zana absently, hopping closer without a hint of fear to examine Haneyl’s scales. The great dragon coils up and back away from her, off-balance and uncertain. “Geez, Hanny. You’re sweating silver. You really can’t handle this stuff, huh?”

“Is it all there?” Nara asks, smiling reassuringly at Haneyl and joining his twin. He gets a nod back as Haneyl blinks down at them, bewildered and unsure of how to react to their blithe disregard for her rage and their strange conversation.

“What-” the dragon starts, vines already weaving her jaw back together.

Whatever she was going to say is lost, though. Because with one last nod of confirmation, Zana grabs Nara by the hand, hefts him up as an enormous hooked chopping sword with a hypnotic eye in the hilt, and sinks it into her sister-soul’s chest.

It’s not blood that spurts out and covers them both, as Keris screams and Haneyl roars. It’s quicksilver - a torrent of it, bright and sweet and gleaming under the light of the blue star. And as Zana wrenches the sword out, the hook on the end reverts into Nara’s hands, clutching a heart that’s threaded through with silver tumours, flush with mercury, beating too fast and too hard and bloated beyond its natural size.

Mercury, Keris realises in a distant horror-filled part of her brain that’s not screaming and sobbing and swearing. It’s a cold, clear little part of her brain that puts things together with Ekoan speed, tracing the hints back while the rest of her falls apart. Rathan’s mercury - in Haneyl. Some part of Szoreny that must have gotten into her... when? All the way back in Taira, when she first imbibed from him? Haneyl had got some of the envy, the desire to outdo others - but not the part that could be satisfied by tearing them down. Just the drive to be better. So she’d started pushing upwards. Climbing, growing, furiously trying to be the best. Never able to be satisfied, never able to rest on her laurels with what she had.

She’d bedded a prince and his fiancee. She’d taken counting-houses and college-priests as her own. She’d helped Keris seize the Hui Cha... and then she’d travelled south, and won an endless stream of wealth and power and influence there.

And with every victory, the mercury in her had thickened and quickened and built on itself. Poisoning her. Driving her desire for _more_ even higher. Because it was toxic, even to her, and she didn’t have the tolerance to handle it.

And Zanara had known. Must have known, all this time. They’d been planning this for weeks - months, maybe even years. Preparing for it. They’d kept Haneyl _simmering_ , drawing the mercury out of her flesh, but not letting her burn – because, Keris realises with a lurch; a burning would have _released_ it, spread it out across the region as the fires turned it to vapour. And quite possibly killed or crippled Haneyl in the process, as the poison was heated to a boil. So Zanara had drawn it out into her blood, and pulled it up to the surface, and now...

Now, the twin forms of Keris’s Tenth Soul cradle the mercury-tainted heart of their sister in their prepubescent little hands. And with joyful, innocent, cherubic little faces, bite down.

Haneyl collapses. She collapses, dead in front of Keris’s eyes. And her corpse so quickly rots, and then ignites. Burning in an eerie pyre that back-lights Zanara as the two little faces tear into the heart, sucking at it and worrying at it, both of them smiling gleefully between mouthfuls.

The howl of pain; the howl of hunger and the fiery rush hits Keris as Haneyl’s spirit slams home. It knocks her flat on her back.

“What are they doing?” shrieks Dulmea in Keris’s head. “The... Tree just ignited and... Keris, I was at a play!”

“They... they killed her,” Keris whispers. She’s vaguely aware that she’s stopped screaming - oh wait, no, those are tears trickling down her cheeks. She’s crying, then. “They just... they cut out her _heart_ and _ate_ it. _Why?_ Why would they...”

“Well, well, well,” says a harsh voice behind Keris. She turns, tears running from her face, and sees the sisters. Eko, ghost-pale, all white, shocked not only wordless but gestureless. And Calesco, knuckles clenched around her bow. “We came back to get you. And saw this.”

She can’t be d-d-dead, Eko mimes with shaking hands. She’s Eko’s baby sister. She should have been here to keep her safe... she has to be... she has to be in mama now, back in her tree, getting better! She has to be!

“I- I feel her,” Keris confirms. “B-but they... it doesn’t change...” Her breath hitches and her hands tremble. She can’t look at the twins’... feast. “They just... they were _smiling_ and _talking_ to her and then they... they...”

Calesco approaches Keris from behind, wrapping her arms around her. She rests her head on Keris’s shoulders, a warm soft thing hugging her mother.

Her words are anything but soft.

“They are your child, _mother_. Why are you surprised they take after you? And they’re Lilunu and Dulmea’s child too. The manipulator your masters made to control people for them. And a cold-hearted killer.”

The sound that escapes Keris isn’t human. It’s a keening wail. She huddles back into Calesco, away from the twins as they finish devouring the heart and approach the trio with silver-stained mouths and hands.

“Before you say anything, you should be,” they begin.

“Thanking us,” says Zana.

“Aware of everything that’s going on,” says Nara at the same time. “Really, it’s your fault, Mama. You split the Mirror Prince between Haneyl and Rathan, only Rathan got most of it and just a fragment got lodged in Hanny and it was making her sick.”

“Really it was for her own good,” Zana contributes, waving a hand with blood and mercury on it. “If she’d hung onto it for much longer she’d’ve got really bad, an’ if she’d had a burning with that stuff in her it could’ve messed her up forever. We’re basic’ly a doctor.”

“Wasn’t just her, either,” they add together. “We already took a whole bunch of mercury off Rathan too. He didn’t really fight it, though. He doesn’t actually like all the effort of hating people and draggin’ them down.” They grin in eerie unison. “He’s too lazy for it. He just wants to look at himself in the mirror.”

The twins are growing as they talk; getting taller, filling out. They’re in their early teen years now, Keris thinks; Zana looks almost like a slimmer version of Haneyl at the same age. She even has one green eye. And the other has an iris that’s Rathan’s pearly red.

Oh oh oh, Eko gestures frantically. Mama, this is probably also your fault for making Zanara have all the bits of Haneyl and Rathan you didn’t like them having when they were babies. It let them have backdoors into those two. You didn’t have to get rid of anything from Eko because she’s perfect, and her darling baby sister is Sirelmiya’s mama and-

“Eko,” Calesco says. “Shut up. Also, I’m not her mother. She’s a cat.”

“You _cut out her heart_ ,” Keris hisses. “She _trusted_ you and you _cut her heart out_.”

“She’ll be better in a year,” Zanara says, almost... hurt. “We wouldn’t have done it if it would have _actually_ killed her. This is just like... bed rest. She’ll be better when she’s not being driven crazy by having that in her heart. We did it to help our big sister.

“But she wouldn’t have given it up willingly,” Nara says. “She wouldn’t give anything up willingly. It’s what she is.”

“And we couldn’t tell you ‘cause she might know,” Zana says. “We did tell Eko, though. Three times. And checked some details.”

Eko staggers back in shock. This is vile calumny, she gestures frantically. She would remember something so horrible!

Keris moans, clutching at her head. She can’t just _ignore_ an attack on her baby girl like this. Letting it go would be betraying Haneyl. But she can’t _attack_ Zanara; they’re her baby too, and... and... and both Zanara and Eko agreed that it was _her fault_ for poisoning Haneyl in the first place, which means _she poisoned her baby she made this happen it was because of her..._

She whimpers, shaking at the effort of reconciling the conflicting drives and the agony of warring urges. It’s too much. It’s just too much. Tired as she is, in pain as she is... she can’t cope with it.

Calesco is still hugging her. Still has her mouth up against her ear. “They’re a brat. But they’re not entirely wrong. It’s your fault they’re like this. The way they can betray someone they love. But it’s also your fault that Haneyl is like she is. Her nature is something you know very well. And something you deny. Are you going to admit it to yourself, or will I have to say it to you? Because _all this_ is because you’re so wrapped in lies you’ve forgotten the painful truth at your core.

“And I still remember my promise. You might not be comfortable or safe, but you aren’t looking for it. That’s all I need. And maybe this pain will help.”

“Say... what?” Keris chokes out hoarsely. “What nature? What pain more than _this?”_

“Oh, mama,” Calesco says gently into her ear. “I am the truth that cuts; that hurts; that can even kill. I’ve known for so long.

“About Chen. About Gull. About every little sordid thing you did in Nexus that you deny. When you tell everyone how you were a pickpocket and a thief and pretend you lived rough since Rat vanished, you’re a liar. You force the memories down, down into a core that’s as sharp as a knife. And pretend you never did any of that, even though right now in Saata you’re playing the same role all dressed up fancy.”

An inhalation.

“Isn’t that right? _Harlot_.”

The tears freeze on Keris’s cheeks. Her hitching breath stills. It seems, for a moment, like the whole world pauses as the words sink gently in. Down, and down, and down.

_the scent of dreamdust, and a bird’s call_

_blue cotton and cheap jewellery and heavy makeup_

_sitting alone in a dark room, knives in hand, listening through the wall_

Keris’s wide eyes turn to Calesco’s. Not in betrayal or anger, but rather some terrible combination of shock and hurt and incomprehension. The expression of a woman looking down at the swordpoint protruding from their chest in the moment before the pain registers. The expression Haneyl had worn, in the moment Zanara had struck.

For a frozen moment, her face is open and her walls are down, hiding nothing.

It’s only that, and long experience with her mother’s reactions, that lets Calesco let go and dive away in time to dodge the explosion of light and sound and force.

By the time the children’s eyes have cleared, their mother is gone.


	11. Interlude 1

**Waking Up**  
Kit is nineteen. It’s snowing outside, as the late-Air winds roll down from the north and enter the city off the fork of the Yanaze. They’ve already been through Nighthammer by the time they get to Firewander, and that means the snow is never white. It’s already dirty as it falls, laden with smoke and ash.

Well, almost never white. Maybe they’ve got a wood shortage, because for once, pure white snow is settling outside under the ruddy light of the dawn.

Rolling over, Kit directs a fond smile at the woman sharing her bed. Or what she can see of her, anyway. It’s mostly just a mop of electric-blue hair buried in the cheap pillow and an arm dangling off the side of the narrow mattress. Even back when they met, Gull was a heavy sleeper - and since passing thirty five last year, she’s been even grouchier in the mornings.

“Gull,” Kit whispers. “Oh Guuu~uuuull...”

“Mmfgr’oudda’t,” mumbles the mop of hair, lighting up like a glowing blue lantern for a moment before fading back to its typical bright sheen. Kit grins. No matter how often Gull does that trick, it never gets old. S’like some of the jellyfish in jars she’s seen in the market, only on a person. If it didn’t stop working when Gull cut it, she’d have stolen enough to make herself a bracelet years ago.

“You gonna sleep the whole day away, Gull?” she prompts. “‘Cause if you leave me alone for the morning, I ain’t bringin’ you back any pretties.”

Turning her head enough to expose her face, Gull pouts. “Kiss?” she mumbles. Kit obligingly pecks her on the lips, and she sighs grumpily. “I was havin’ a nice dream,” she complains. “No need t’go wakin’ me up from it.”

Sitting up, she stretches, pulling her thin linen nightshift tight. It’s not much extra warmth at night, but it’s better than nothing - and it does interesting things to her figure when she bends over. Kit has one in sheer red silk, stolen from a lady’s boudoir, but Gull fills hers out better. Certainly, Kit thinks so, and ogles Gull shamelessly. She gives an impish smirk when the older woman catches her at it.

“Hush, you,” the older woman says, wagging a finger at her. Her hair falls around her face in perfect curls; her lips as red as cherries. “I can hear you thinkin’ it.”

“Aww, c’mon,” Kit purrs, pushing Gull back down as she clambers on top of her. “Ain’t nothing I haven't seen before. And more.” Her thin body is between Gull's legs, and the two of them are lovely and snug under the covers.

They make a pretty pair together, Kit likes to think. The kind of thing other people are jealous of. Kit is dark skinned with striking grey eyes and her face really doesn't look much like anyone else’s who has the same skin colour. Gull, by contrast, is Firewander born and bred; a Calibration child with the touch of chaos in her colour-changing eyes and her unnatural hair.

“You could always stay in with me today,” she tempts. “Have a lie-in ‘til the afternoon, grab somethin’ to eat from the Drunken Duck around noon. There’s a new Civility out; afternoon meals gotta be different from morning ones. He’ll be lookin’ to offload whatever’s left. Then we could just come back to bed after, spend the rest of the afternoon...”

Gull looks briefly swayed. But she sighs. “Kit, love,” she points out. “You know we gotta make rent this month. I got a job - a nice payer; witch-work down on Eas’ Soot Lane.” She taps a finger over Kit’s pout. “No whining, now. I’ll pick you up some apples on the way back, huh?”

Something prompts Kit to hug her tighter. “I love you,” she says; bold and unashamed. “You know that, right? You’re always so good to me.” Nuzzling into Gull’s neck, she breathes her in - the sweet oils she uses in her work as a joyful priestess, the tang of incense and the ever-present heavy scent of dreamdust. “You’re the best part of my life,” Kit whispers into her neck. “I love you, Gull.”

“Oi now, where’s this comin’ from?” Gull asks, stroking her short-cropped hair. She’s warm under Kit, and when she wraps her legs around her, she presses Kit into her body. “You getting sappy on me, Kit? My li’l savage goin’ soft?”

Kit bares her teeth and shakes her head, but stays put. She hears the smile in Gull’s voice as a kiss presses into her curls.

“I love you too, sweetheart. Always will. I promise.”

* * *

**Alone Together**  
Kit is seventeen. The lilacs are blossoming in Nexus, as Wood warms up. The canals are turning green from pondweed, but it’s not hot enough yet for them to stink. For a moment, Kit thinks she can see a body floating in the water - but of course, it’s just a log! Ha ha! 

They’ve found a place together; her and Gull. They have the cash for it, what with their stealing and what they’ve got put aside - and better yet, it’s just on the edge of Firewander, safely away from the nastier bits. And it’s beautiful. Their apartment has a garden on the roof and there’s a noodle shop and a bar on the ground floor. The walls are clean and whitewashed, and outside in the little square, two musicians are playing for coin. Two well-lit rooms that overlook the canals, plus a main living space that Gull can use to spin and Kit can use when washing needs to be done.

“I’ll be making you a new set of clothes ‘fore Air comes around again, just you see,” she tells Kit brightly as she sidles in through the door, holding an armful of laundry. It wasn’t bought, of course, and Kit falls upon it, sorting through it to see what’ll fit either of them and what they can sell off for a handy sum.

She cackles as she finds the prize. “Silk stockings,” Kit declares, waving them around. There are sinuous dragons embroidered up them, and maybe she caught her hand on a loose bit of stitching, because her fingers twinge sharply for a moment as she brandishes them. She ignores it in favour of a wide and toothy grin. “Well! What nobby lady did you pick these up from? Tell me, tell me!”

Gull flips a bright red scarf around her neck, and giggles. “Well, there I was, just walking down Three Pig Lane, when this well handsome gentleman propositions me.” She runs her hands through her bright blue hair. “Well, he seemed like the handsome sort - and then he takes me not to his home, but to the place where he works. I reckon he was trying to impress me. And then he’s getting handy and wants to get me up to the missus’s bedroom and I go, ‘Well, how about I slip into something more comfortable?’ and the man, his head’s bobbing away.”

“He just let you into the bedroom?” Kit asks in disbelief.

“He did, he did! Well, of course, there I was in some nobby broad’s boo-dwah.” Gull grins. “And shortly afterwards, there I was out the window, with a right proper load of her laundry and,” she digs down the front of her dress, “look at these, well pretty necklaces.”

Kit examines them. “Well, they’re just gilt over silver,” she says authoritatively, “but I reckon we can get a pretty sum for them.”

“Well,” Gull says, leaning in to kiss Kit with lips that taste like cherries, “one of them is for you. I think the opal in the silver would be beautiful on you.”

Lips parted, Kit takes the kisses on her brow and cheeks, blushing bright red. “Well, we can just drop by Chen’s and see how much he’ll give us for the rest,” she says.

Gull blinks. “Kit? Chen’s gone. None’s seen him since that fire at his warehouse.”

Yes. That’s right, that’s… that’s right. His warehouse burned down. She’d seen the fires at night. Red light all over the walls. He’s gone. Scarpered, word is on the street. Shame. He’d been a good boss, a great fence, and had always had tips and tricks for his good earners like Kit and Gull.

“Yeah,” she says. “Sorry, it’s just… weird he’s gone.”

Gull wraps her arms around Kit, warm and sweet-smelling. Her blue dress rubs against Kit’s skin. “You know, I reckon with a haul like this, we can go eat something nobby,” she says. “Not just noodles.”

The thought alone is enough to get Kit’s mouth watering. “Beef and chicken and pork belly from that place on Five Stick Way?” she breaths.

“Yeah. And maybe a cardamom egg for me,” Gull says. “Come on, come on!”

* * *

**Hungry Eyes**  
Kit is sixteen. It’s late in Fire. The bars are all open, and she’s snuggled up to Gull. Paper lanterns float down the nearest canal, and the priests on the barges bang their gongs. She’s drunk and high, and she feels great. Apart from the high heels. They actually went and bought high heels - bought, not stole! - for her. She loves being taller, but she doesn’t like how they make her feet hurt. She can’t feel her toes.

“Kit Kit Kit,” Gull murmurs into her ear, nibbling gently at it. She’s playful, and her hands are wandering. They’re running over her body, under her clothes, petting and patting and rubbing her. And Liho is on her other side, and their hands are also on her and they’re kissing and nibbling at her. “Guess what. Guess what?”

“What?” Kit squirms, trying to get away from the tickling but not willing to escape.

There’s a bright light shining down on her. Something’s in her hair. Red confetti and ribbons fall around her, down to the ground. And her feet are hurting even more than her ear.

“I love the way you taste,” Gull whispers, eyes bright blue and lusty.

“You’re delicious,” Liho sighs. Their hands are unlacing her dress, and they’re leaving lip paint kisses, bright red, up Kit’s arms and across over her cheeks. The paint rolls down in streaks, staining her half-off clothing.

A firework explodes overhead, painting the world scarlet.

Kit grins, and kisses Gull full on the lips. It’s the first time she’s dared to do this, to kiss her like a woman would - and Kit thinks joyful prayers to every love goddess she can think of as Gull kisses her back.

* * *

**Bigger Prey**  
Kit is sixteen, and Rat is… well, he’s gone. It’s been a year now. He’s not coming back. Gull thinks he’s probably dead, though she’s careful never to say it where Kit can hear her. Calley and Chen think so too, and they’re not so considerate.

She doesn’t want to think they’re right. If he were dead, there’d be a body, and she’s scoured the whole city for one; up and down the river and along every goddamn stretch of canal. She never found one, not in all that searching. But... why else? Why else wouldn’t he come back? Where did he go? What _happened_ to make him disappear one day?

She wishes she knew.

But right now she can’t linger on that, because the bossman wants to see her. Chen is in his office over the bakery on Essel and Corvey Way, and Kit nods cautiously at the big, muscular man transferring a tray of freshly-made loaves to the shelves on her way in. His arms did not, she is aware, get that big just by kneading dough. She’s seen him throw unwanted visitors out of the door so hard they bounced off the opposite wall.

But she’s known here, and allowed - as long as she keeps her hands in her pockets - so up the narrow staircase she goes, and through the little wooden door that’s humming with wards her burgeoning senses can pick up - as well as a lot more she can’t. Chen’s behind his big cluttered desk, as usual.

“Hey boss,” she drawls, flopping sideways onto the armchair in the corner and flipping a glittering little pearl earring onto the ledger he’s looking through. “Brought you a shiny. Whatcha got for me?”

“I got a problem, kid,” says Chen, dropping the earring into a drawer and closing the book. He’s a proper geezer; born and raised in the Scavenger Lands instead of coming from foreign parts like Kit. He’s short for a grown-up, but there’s muscle under the second-hand posh suits and his knuckles are calloused like a brawler’s from his way up the ladder. Still, nowadays he’s late into his forties and has other people to do his fighting for him. He’s got fussy little spectacles perched on his twice-broken nose, and his dented square face is clean-shaven and dabbed with expensive cologne.

Kit wrinkles her nose at it. Chen likes to think it makes him more nobby, but she always sorta thought it makes him smell like a campfire in a dog kennel.

“You got lotsa problems, boss,” she says instead of voicing that thought. She could get away with it - Chen ain’t gonna bang up his best thief - but it’s best not to push her luck when he’s about to offer her a job. “Gonna have to narrow it down a bit. We talking stealing, spying, some package that needs running somewhere?”

Lacing his fingers together, Chen looks over the big chunky rings he wears and eyes her up and down. “You’ve grown a lot since you started working for me, kid,” he says slowly. “Learned all kinds of things from the teachers I put you in front of. Turned into a right little earner. And you got a knack for getting the job done.”

Kit preens. She’s always happy to hear praise from the big man. Maybe it’ll mean a bonus!

“Liho’s on a month-long job out of the city for me,” he goes on. “And I ain’t got anyone else quite right for this, and it’s urgent. So I’m giving it to you and betting on you not to screw it up, you hear me? Pull this off, kid, and I’ll start throwing much bigger jobs your way - better ones. More trusted ones. You get it?”

Eyes widening, Kit shifts herself the right way up in the armchair and nods slowly. This... this is big. She’s being given a Liho-job. Something _important_. From the sounds of it, she’s even gonna be doing it solo - or maybe even _in charge_.

“I got a problem,” Chen repeats, “and it’s called Madame Yingsha.”

Oh.

Pox.

“Ain’t you... kinda at a truce with her?” Kit ventures. “Y’know, since the, uh, Big Market brawl. When the Council got involved looking into it and Bel almost got nabbed by mercenaries?”

“I was,” Chen agrees. “But she’s been doing some double-dealing since. Trying to undercut me. I can’t have her in my ring of the city, kid. And that means I can’t have her in the city at all. I need her gone.”

“... I reckon she ain’t gonna leave if you ask nicely,” Kit ventures, now getting thoroughly nervous.

“She ain’t,” Chen says bluntly. “Which is why you, Kit, are gonna sink her for me.”

“M-me? Sink _Madame Ying?”_ Kit stutters. “By myself? Boss, I know I’m spec, but-”

“We got an opportunity up for us,” Chen cuts in, his eyes gleaming greedily. “Listen, kid. Yingsha’s handling a load from the South for the Midnight Queen. Opals and alchemical shit and whatnot. I got the location where it’s gonna be overnighting before being passed onto her, and you’re gonna help steal it.”

Kit goes pale and brings her knees up to where she can hug them. Steal? From Ephiselle? A _Council member?_ Is he _mad?_

He grins a nasty grin. “C’mon now, kid. All you gotta do is get in through a window and open the doors for my boys. We’ll walk off with the shipment, Yingsha’ll have to flee the city, everyone wins. And as an added bonus; any little pretties you pocket for yourself, I’ll turn a blind eye to. How about that?”

Terror wars with greed for a moment, and Kit’s torn in two directions. While she’s wrestling with it, the door opens again, and an old woman walks stiffly in. Her hair is faded green streaked with silver and her gait is odd - a consequence of her feet being another set of hands; her heritage from the far, far East amplified by her Calibration birth.

“I want it heard,” Old Calley snaps without bothering with pleasantries, “that I think this’s a mad idea t’start with, an’ I’ll have no part in going against the Council.”

Kit eyes her up and down. Chen must’ve got word to her first - or maybe she saw it in one of her visions. From the crease on Chen’s forehead, it’s probably the second one, and Kit feels a little flicker of jealousy at how Calley sometimes just _knows_ things, all spooky-like. “But if yer insistin’ on it,” the old occultist continues, “I’ll tell you what your haul’s worth and how to get rid of it without bringing mercenaries down on us all.” Then her eyes shift to Kit, and narrow. “You’re using _her_ for this?”

“What’s that meant to mean?” Kit bristles, rising into a crouch on the seat of the armchair.

“Gel, you can’t keep yer mouth shut and not six months ago I was patchin’ you up for gettin’ into reckless fights on every corner. A job like this ain’t gonna be half as forgiving.” She glares at Chen. “She ain’t capable of this; yer sending her out to die. Wait for Liho to get back.”

“There ain’t time for that-” Chen begins, but Kit cuts him off.

“You take that back!” she all but shrieks, teeth baring and one hand straying to her knife. “I’m the best thief he’s got! I can pull it off seamless, you’ll see!” She spits at Calley and rounds on Chen. “Just gimme the time an’ the place, boss, I’ll get it done!”

He smiles his river dragon smile, and pulls a cigar from his drawer, tossing her a packet of coca leaf as an afterthought.

“That’s what I like to hear, kid,” he says. “Now listen up, and listen good...”

* * *

**Learning Her Trade**  
Kit is thirteen, and the birds are calling outside the little temple. Well, that’s what Gull calls this small room, with an unfolded portable shrine and a large bed stacked with pillows. The air is thick with incense and perfume, and the blinds are shut.

The older woman has prettied her up, done her hair nicely and helped her put on white makeup and paint her lips and eyes blue. It’s all to please the gods, she says. Because Gull’s a street witch, just like Old Calley, though she doesn’t like the term. She calls herself a joyful priestess with a wink.

“See,” Gull says, carefully lighting the first incense stick, and directing Kit to do the same, “the gods are just like men. And women too.” 

Kit blanches under the white and blue make-up Gull’s carefully applied. “What do you mean by that?”

“Light it.” Gull settles back, legs tucked under herself, and wraps her hands up under her long blue sleeves. “Not like that. Not quite. But they want to be told that they’re handsome - or beautiful. They want you to tell them that they’re kind, that they’re generous, that they deserve all the praise you’re giving them. And when you give ‘em your dues, they’ll pay you back. That’s what you need to do. It’s one of the reasons why Mister Chen pays me a retainer. It’s what I do. Keepin’ the gods happy and smilin’ on us all is what a joyful priestess does. Makin’ sure their idols stand upright and their offerin’ bowls are wet with wine.”

“But…” Kit tries to get the shapes of the words into her head. “They’re gods.” The older woman looks down at the girl, waiting for her to continue. Kit wrings her hands together. “You’re not meant to…”

“Not meant to?” Gull laughs. “They tell you you ain’t meant to steal, don’t they?”

“Yeah, but they don’t know…”

“Yeah, and that’s it. Them monks and nuns in their temples don’t know how things are.”

Kit screws her face up. “Yeah, they don’t.” 

Gull wraps her arms around the stick-thin girl’s bony shoulders. “And listen up, gal, when you know how to do this, I’ll start teachin’ you how to butter up the little spirits. Tell them the right thing, get ‘em drunk on an offering of wine, move your hands just right, and they’ll be so happy with you that the nasty magic bags use for locks and door screamers just falls apart. And when you’re a bit older… well, that’s when you can do some of the real powerful things. Old magic, lettin’ them into your body for power or to keep them happy, and helpin’ ghosts pass on even if they don’t think they want to. Stuff I ain’t teaching you a pinch of until I know you got the talent.”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

“So.” Gull cuddles her. “Ready to try again?”

“Yeah!”  
“That’s my girl,” Gull says, voice soft and gentle in its Firewander drawl, and Kit can’t help but blush. She likes Gull. She’s soft and nicer than Old Calley - and so pretty too! And she likes Kit! She’s teaching her all these tricks!

* * *

“Yer never gonna punch good,” slurs Bel. This close to her, in a sandy-floored yard that backs onto a canal off Mister Chen’s place on Diggory Street, he towers over Kit. It’s intimidating, looking up and up at him - but she’s fiercely intent on his every word. The smell of bluebells washes over her, from where they’re sprouting thickly around the corners of the square.

“Too scrawny,” he explains, leaning down to pinch her thin wrists between a calloused finger and thumb. “Bu’ yer a good runner. So you can kick.”

He steps back, and gestures to one of the wooden posts hammered into the ground with a grunt. “Try,” he orders.

Kit looks at him, tries to remember what she’s seen of _his_ kicks, and shifts her weight back. Glaring at the post, she swings her foot into it as hard as she can, and falls over with a yell as her shoddy boots prove they’re not up to the task of protecting her toes. Bel snorts as she goes down, clutching her foot and swearing.

“No’ like tha’,” he says. “Here. Like this.”

One long leg lashes out, almost too fast for Kit to follow, and the iron bands wrapped around his feet _crack_ against the top of the post hard enough to splinter the wood there. Bel nonchalantly tilts back to an upright stance, not even breathing hard.

“Firs’ you gotta bend, ey?” he explains. “Tha’ leg. Bend i’.” He hooks his over-long foot around the back of Kit’s knee and pulls gently; enough to get it bending and almost unbalance her. She bares her teeth and glares up at him, swiping at his ankle as he pulls it back, and he bares his own much bigger incisors back at her in a grin.

“Uhn,” he nods, floppy ears waggling. “Now yer gonna hit wi’ yer heel or yer ball.” Coming up on one leg again, he taps his sole at the base of his big toe. “Where yer balance is. Heel firs’, though. Keep yer ankle in line wi’ yer leg. Pull back’n go. Aim for behin’ the post. An...”

He looks her up and down, squints thoughtfully, eyes the post, and lashes out again. Kit’s eyes widen. That. _That’s_ what she wants to be able to do. No warning, no wind-up - just a sudden flash of movement that breaks limbs.

This time, his leg hits lower. About halfway down the post, level with the base of her ribs. She looks at him incredulously.

“I ain’t kicking that,” she objects. “My legs don’t bend up that far. I’ll fall over.”

Bel folds his arms, and she flinches back instinctively. But no, it’s okay - he’s grinning.

“Tha’s where a man’s dick’ll be,” he says, and watches her eyes light up in understanding. “Yer gonna kick there ‘cause you wanna make ‘em scream. Tha’s wha’ you wanna go for, li’l Kit. Never figh’ fair. Never le’ the other guy say where you figh’ him. Never le’ him say _when_ you figh’ him. Always keep ‘em off-balance, no’ knowin’ where you are, wi’ more people’n they go’. Yer never gonna win by the rules, so break ‘em wherever you can.”

Kit nods, wide-eyed, absorbing the advice. Pick where she fights. Go for the weak spots. Outnumber and overpower. Use dirty tactics to blind or trip people before pouncing on them. Pay someone to slip something in their drink before you corner them in an alley. Cheat, cheat, cheat, and then cheat some more. She’d thought Bel was just dumb muscle when he first started teaching her, but the more she’d learned, the more she’d realised he was anything but - at least where fighting was concerned. As far as Bel was concerned, the only fair fight was one rigged overwhelmingly in his favour.

“Now kick,” he tells her. “Aim behin’ the log by a foo’ or two. An’ keep yer ankle in line.” He demonstrates again, slowly - pulling back onto one leg, chambering the other, leaning back and turning side-on to the post and then kicking outward at stomach-height.

Except stomach-height for her isn’t stomach-height for other people. Kit looks at the level of the splintered mark, and her lips stretch in a nasty grin.

It’s high up. But being able to kick _there?_ Will be well worth a few falls.

* * *

“... an’ then we came home by Whalebone Lane so I could grab some apples from the old geezer’s stall there,” Kit finishes, and looks up nervously. Sprawled out on the fancy armchair, Liho smirks.

“You were lying about the time of day, how much you got, and the route back,” they drawl. Then they chuckle at Kit’s flabbergasted expression and explain. “You stalled out for a couple of seconds as you tried to decide between evening and afternoon, and you put way too much detail into how you got back. If you’d really come back that way; you wouldn’t remember it that clearly. Too much detail is as much a sign of a lie as too little.”

“How’d you know ‘bout the take, though?” Kit protests. Liho rolls their eyes, uncrossing their upper pair of arms and recrossing their lower.

“Sweet little darling mine, you’re a greedy little street rat. Of course you lied about how much you stole.”

Kit pouts. Liho’s place is Bag-style cushy for all that it’s small - warm and all decked out with rich little bits and trinkets. She likes coming here. But she hates ‘Lie To Me’. It’s a game she can never seem to win - and all Liho’s tips and tricks haven’t helped much in making her less obvious.

Propping their chin on their upper hands, Liho considers her. “I’ll be honest with you,” they say. “You’re a shit liar, little Kit. You probably always will be. Your imagination’s not bad, but you’re crap at keeping it believable when you sell things you’ve made up, and you can’t judge the detail stuff half as well as your friend can.” Kit bristles, and Liho waves her down casually, tapping their lip. “Maybe...” they hum, “yes, that might work. Alright then, darling. Since you can’t lie worth a damn, let’s talk about how to fool people without needing to. Let me tell you how to get people to lie to _themselves_ , with nothing but the truth.”

“You can _do_ that?” Kit asks, awed. Liho laughs. It’s a pretty sound, alluring and enrapturing.

“That and more, kitten. You know, I said you were a shit liar - and I was right, you are. You can’t tell falsehoods for a damn. But hiding... hiding you are good at, aren’t you? You’re sweet as a berry when you’re sitting at Gull’s feet, then a vicious little monster when Bel’s showing you how to hurt people.” They lean down, cupping Kit’s chin and stroking her hair. Their sweet breath flutters on the little girl’s skin, and the strange patterns in their eyes swirl and mix hypnotically. “That’s how you can lie, little Kit. Pick something that’s true, and hide everything else. Don’t try and wear a mask - wear a _face_ , and make it real. Be a beggar girl one day and a burglar the next, and forget there’s anything else to you until you need to be someone different.”

They drop a light kiss on Kit’s forehead, and settle back into their armchair. “Stick with me, my sweet little thing, do what I say - and I’ll show you how to change yourself _completely_.”

* * *

**Strength in Numbers**  
Kit is twelve, and she’s survived another Calibration. Now the temperature’s dropping quickly. Yesterday morning she saw the first ice on the canals. They’re saying it’s going to be a cold, hard Air this year - and she’d believe it.

But this year, she’s gonna be warmer. Because it’s not just Rat anymore. Getting that job with Long Chen is the best thing that Rat has ever done for them. They work for him now, and he looks after his people. They’re living up in an attic in one of the buildings he owns, and the two of them are street rats. They know all about the roof roads and the ways that mean they can scramble from place to place as fast as you like.

And it’s not just that. ‘Cause Long Chen wants them for their skills, for how they’re small and clever and can get in through chimneys and garret windows and suchlike. And as dark Air clouds gather over the city, Kit and Rat are dozing in the warmth as the adults talk about a job.

Liho, Gull and Bel. They’re Mister Chen’s people. Kit’s seen them on the streets before, but she’s kept well clear of them until now. Even the kid gangs do. Scrapping over territory was one thing, but you didn’t want Mister Chen mad at you. And those three are… weird. All of them, touched by Firewander. But they’re on her side now - or she’s on theirs - and Mister Chen says she’s gonna be learning from ‘em.

Bel has beastblood. He’s part-rabbit, and Kit’d thought that sounded funny right up until she first saw him. Sure, his floppy bald ears are kind of weird looking, but his teeth are scary-big and Rat swears blind he’s heard that Bel tore out someone’s throat with them once. Kit hasn’t plucked up the urge to ask him yet. And then there are his legs. Man can kick down a door as casually as knocking on it, or break a man’s knee with a boot. Not that he wears them. He has these clumpy sandals wrapped in iron bands for his too-long feet. Kit doesn’t know what a huge man like Bel can teach someone her size about fighting - ‘specially given that he’s a bit slow in the head and slurs his words - but she ain’t gonna say ‘no’ and risk making him mad.

Gull, now; Gull’s nicer. Kit likes looking at her; with her bright blue hair that can glow and her eyes that change colour to match her mood. She’s maybe the prettiest lady that Kit’s ever talked to - prettier than some Bags, even! Kit isn’t quite sure what she does, but she’s heard the rumours that Gull’s friendly with a lot of people and a priestess of Venus and a street-witch, which sounds super neat. And she’s an even better pickpocket than Kit is! Kit ain’t even mad, not after seeing Gull lift a pretty gold ring right off a Bag’s finger without him even noticing! The monks who hand out food to street kids aren’t half as cool as Gull. Kit can’t wait to learn better ways of thieving from her - and she’s dropped hints about other stuff, too; getting around the little wards and cantrips people use on doors and windows.

And then there’s Liho. Kit doesn’t really _get_ Liho - which maybe makes sense, since Rat said she’d be learning how to lie better from them. But it’s not just that they’re hard to figure out; they’re also _weird_. Gull and Bel are a bit Firewander-y, but Liho’s gone really, really far that way. They have patches of animal fur on their arms, weird swirly patterns in their eyes and a hidden extra pair of arms they keep hidden under their loose clothes. Rat says they went into the Wyld parts of the district on purpose to change their body - more than once, even! He really likes them, though even he hasn’t managed to find out if they’re a boy or a girl - actually, when Kit last asked how he was doing, he’d giggled and said they might be both.

But Kit feels warier. Maybe it’s the way Liho _smiles_ all the time; like they know something nobody else does, or like they’re playing a joke on everyone that’s not quite got to the punchline yet. Maybe it’s the way she doesn’t understand _why_ someone would go into the bad places in Firewander deliberately, _wanting_ their body twisted and changed. Maybe it’s just that they’re in charge. It’s Liho who calls everyone together when Mister Chen has a new job, and Liho who the boss trusts most as a go-between and a ‘fixer’. Whatever it is they fix, Kit’s not sure. Anything Mister Chen considers broken, maybe.

That’s why they’re here now. True to form, Liho’s wearing their knowing little smirk as they talk - mostly to Gull, though Bel occasionally grunts in answer to a question. Kit doesn’t bother listening too hard to the details of the job. It’s something about money someone owes Mister Chen; Liho and Gull gotta talk to the debtor about stuff, there’s a threatening note that needs to be left someplace for whoever they’re talking to to find after they all leave, and Rat’ll tell her anything past that if she needs to know it.

“Sure she can!” Rat swears, rousing Kit from her lazy doze. She cracks an eye open and glares up at him quizzically, having missed whatever question he’s answering for her. He glances down and makes a face at her before looking back at Liho. “Kit’s been climbin’ walls for years; first time we ever met she was halfway up a building. It’ll be no problem for her to get in there; right?”

“Yeah, sure,” she agrees, not fully sure what she’s agreeing to but trusting Rat to know what he’s talking about. “‘Long as it ain’t one of them sheer-glass swank walls on Baghouses, I can climb it.”

“Mhm,” hums Liho cheerfully. “Well then, sweet children and,” they flick Gull’s chin with a wink, “sweeter adults. Let’s go ruin someone’s life!”

* * *

**Nightmares and Monsters**  
Kit is twelve, and it’s dark outside. There’s no sun. No moon. No stars. And that means only one thing in Nexus, because even in the darkest nights when the clouds from Nighthammer blots out the sky, it’s never this dark.

“By order of the Council, no individuals are to walk on the streets without iron and garlic upon their person,” a crier calls out, but they’re a long way away.

She’s somewhere she doesn’t recognise; tall white walls, all nobby-like, but they’re harsh and bare, not decorated like a bag’s house. And there’s this eerie blue light everywhere. It’s not coming from anywhere in particular. It’s just seeping from the walls, washing away her shadow. 

And there’s blood on the floor. And things with teeth. And she tries to reach out, but she can’t! Can’t! They’re grinning at her with their teeth and she doesn’t know what to do and… and… and...

Kit sits bolt upright, brow wet with nightmare-sweat. Rat is there, sharing the warmth of their blankets in cold Air weather; holding her hand.

“Kit,” he says. “What’s the matter?”

“I… the…” Kit blinks. The nightmare is fading. She’s in the attic with Rat, except… she screws her eyes shut. She’s trying to pull bits together. “They was gonna get me. The boggies and the creepers down past the end of Five Cherry Lane, in the ol’ pit. It was all blue and… and...”

“We ain’t there,” Rat says, squeezing her hand tighter. “Go back to sleep. That were weeks ago. See, there aren’t no blue here. And I ain’t a boggy, right?”

“Yeah. Yeah. You ain’t.” Kit huddles under the thin blanket, trembling and cuddling up to Rat. “Rat. Tell me a story.”

Rat smiles, showing his white teeth. “Yeah. Okay, Kit. Just one story, then bed. And just sleep, ‘kay?”

* * *

**Opportunism**  
Kit is twelve. The heat of Fire is here in full, hanging thick over the city. In heat like this, only an idiot would want to live indoors. Nexus is sweltering - but not them! They got their squat and it’s plenty cool, ha!

She’s sprawled out on stolen cushions, living like a fancy lady as she snacks on an apple, when Rat yanks aside the curtain. 

“Oi!” she snaps at him, looking around for a rock to toss at him. 

“Kit, I got something spec for us.” He’s red in the face, sunburnt in the Fire sun, and his long reddish-blonde hair is tied back into a ponytail. “You know that ring we got off the bag?”

She smirks, thin cheeks curving up. “He squealed like a fat piggy when I got that knife ‘gainst his back when you was talking to him,” she says gleefully.

He pulls out a pouch. “Well, look what I got for it!” he announces proudly, giving her a sight into it. “Look!”

Kit turns pale. Shakily, she fishes out the brown and the greened-copper coins. “That’s… four siu, and lots of yen. That’s… that’s… that’s Realm money! That’s a fortune!”

“Ten siu!” Rat tells her, eyes as wide as hers. 

“How!”

Rat crosses his arms, leaning against the wall. “I went to Long Chen,” he tells her. “He said I was such a smart young boy, he was gonna pay me more than the going rate ‘cause the ring was good gold and there was a pretty stone in it. And more than that, he asked how I got it.”

Kit curls back. “You didn’t blab, didya?” she demands.

“Blab!” The boy puffs out his chest. “I told him all ‘bout how brilliant we are. And he said he thought if we could get him more rings like that, he might have more jobs for us. I told him all ‘bout how you’re small so you can get in through tiny windows and chimneys and get the door open and how you’re well good with a knife even though you’re a girl and…”

“Even though?” Kit growls, trying to hide that she’s turning red from all that praise.

“Hey, Red Ox didn’t ‘pect you to stab him like that even though he’s like twice as tall as you!” Rat crows. “Anyway, Long Chen wants us to do jobs for him. He says some people working for him need some new kids to get in through windows and stuff and working for a big fence like him is even better than being ganged up ‘cause when you’re working for a boss like ‘im, the gangs don’t mess with you ‘cause a bunch of kids know that if Mister Chen is mad at ‘em, they better scarper!”

“Well,” Kit draws it out, considering it as she finishes her apple. “I guess we better go see how much he’s gonna give us. And if he was tricking you, I’ll stab ‘im!”

Rat laughs, but nervously rubs his neck. “Better not stab Long Chen,” he advises. “‘Lest you want us all face down in the canals. We got something good coming, I can feel it, Kit. The ‘strology lady on Fifth told me that. Don’t fuck it up for us!”

“Never,” she promises with a grin. “You know me, Rat. I’ll always have your back; just like you’ll always have mine.”

He grins back and they bump fists, then draw their fingers across their throats with playful grimaces. “Together forever,” he says.

“Until the end,” Kit agrees.

* * *

**Soulmates**  
Keris is seven, and she’s free. There’s an ugly burn from river-tar on her left arm where the brand used to be, and the pretty clothes that she had to wear back _there_ are shredded and torched and she doesn’t care at all because she’s _free_.

She’s free, and she has a place all her own, and right now there’s somebody in it who isn’t her.

Grey eyes glare down hatefully from the plank that rests on two ledges on either side of the alley. It’s a boy about her age, dressed as scruffily as her but not as dirty.

He’s bigger than her, though. And he doesn’t look as hungry. And he has a belt pouch with something in it. He’s looking at the piles of junk at the streetside end of the short gap between two buildings. Bright flowers are growing there, in blues and reds, and long lush grass sprouts in patches between the fallen stones.

They’re empty. Keris already scavenged everything scavengable from them, which wasn’t much.

But they’re _her_ piles.

Baring her teeth, she works the sharp iron nail around in her fist as she waits for him to work his way towards the river until he’s underneath her. Then, while he’s distracted by another pile of junk, she drops on him from two metres up. He’s not completely oblivious - he hears the plank rattle and looks up - but he’s not quick _enough_. The impact drives him to the floor and knocks all the wind out of him.

And that’s when she’s pulled off him by _another_ girl who came out of nowhere. She’s even smaller and darker than Keris, with skin and hair that’s ink black. But her eyes - her eyes are many colours and the pupils are slits.

Keris snarls, and flails, fighting the girl as her nail goes clattering off into a gutter. Her attacker looks even younger than she is, but she’s strong, very strong - and Keris’s left arm isn’t responding. It isn’t doing what she wants. “Get off!” she screams, kicking and thrashing. “Get _off!”_ The boy isn’t getting up, isn’t moving.

All the air is forced out of Keris’s stomach as the girl squeezes, and while she’s gasping for breath, she’s slammed bodily into the filthy walls of the alleyway. Groaning, she collapses to the ground. The ground is unpleasantly damp under her, and stinks for obvious reasons like a Nexan alley.

The girl with the long black hair that’s moving like a market octopus’s tentacles squats down beside her. She grabs Keris’s left arm possessively, and glares at her with her strange, strange eyes like Keris is meant to know who this five year old is.

“This’s m’ place,” Keris groans, tasting blood. Her right hand grabs around her, trying to find something - anything to use as a weapon. She grabs a rock and swings it at the girl, but it just bounces off her. The impact jars all the way up Keris’s shoulder.

The girl shrieks at her wordlessly, and bites her. Keris’s skin peels away as if it’s been sunburnt - or is it skin? She’s suddenly not sure. Because what comes away is as black as the girl’s skin, and the arm under it is larger than it should be.

Kicking and flailing, Keris fights and fights. This isn’t how it went this isn’t how it went _this isn’t how it went!_


	12. Interlude 2

**It Was Just A Dream**  
Kit blinks, rubbing sleepy eyes. She… what?

She’s nineteen. It’s snowing outside, as the late-Air winds roll down from the north. They’ve already been through Nighthammer by the time they get to Firewander, and that means the snow is never white. It’s already dirty as it falls, laden with smoke and ash. Cold, filthy water is creeping through the cracks of their door.

“Gull?” she asks, tense and on-edge for some reason she can’t explain. She sits halfway up in bed, palming her knives and scanning her surroundings for a threat. Her heart’s pounding, and she’s breathing fast, like she’s just been running or fighting. But... that’s absurd, because she’s been asleep here with Gull.

Right?

“I was... I was remembering things, but they were _wrong_...” she says, half to herself and half to the air. Maybe saying it out loud will help her pin down whatever was wrong.

“S’js’a’dr’m, Ki’,” groans the body behind her, prodding her in the hip. “C’m b’k ta bed.”

Relaxing back onto the sheets and rolling over, Kit directs a fond smile at the woman sharing her bed. Or what she can see of her, anyway. It’s mostly just a mop of electric-blue hair buried in the cheap pillow and an arm dangling off the side of the narrow mattress. Even back when they met, Gull was a heavy sleeper - and since passing thirty five last year, she’s been even grouchier in the mornings.

“Gull,” Kit whispers. “Oh Guuu~uuuull...”

“Mmfgr’oudda’t,” mumbles the mop of hair, lighting up like a glowing blue lantern for a moment before fading back to its typical bright sheen. Kit pauses. She’s seen this before. Well, of course she has. This is Gull. No matter how often she does that trick, it never gets old. S’like some of the jellyfish in jars she’s seen in the market, only on a person. If it didn’t stop working when Gull cut it, she’d have stolen enough to make herself a bracelet years ago.

“You gonna sleep the whole day away, Gull?” she prompts. “‘Cause if you leave me alone for the morning, I ain’t bringin’ you back any pretties.”

Turning her head enough to expose her face, Gull pouts. She’s got a fading, green-yellow bruise on her cheek just under her eye. “Kiss?” she mumbles. Kit obligingly pecks her on the lips, and she sighs lustily. “Oh, Kit, I love you,” she whispers, pressing up against the younger woman.

Kit beams. “Love you too,” she says, when she comes up for air.

Gull is already fumbling at her layers of night clothing, pulling them off with frenzied haste. “It’s a cold mornin’ and there ain’t any need to be out and about,” she whispers to Kit between kisses. The last of her clothing comes off, showing her body. She’s lost weight, showing her ribs. “You ain’t going out, are you? I got summin’ for you to look at.”

“Aww, c’mon,” Kit purrs, pushing Gull back down as she clambers on top of her. “Ain’t nothing I haven't seen before. And more.”

“Kit? Don’t leave, you hear me? Just stay here. Where it’s warm and nice.”

Kit grins. “Only if we stay in bed, under the covers,” she teases, wriggling up against her girlfriend. “A’cos…” she slips her left hand down to play with…

Wait. Her arm isn’t moving. And sudden fear clutches Kit’s heart. Because it doesn’t feel like she went to sleep on the arm. It feels like someone’s grabbed her wrist and is forcing it back.

Then her arm jerks, carrying her shoulder with her, and drags her out of bed. She hits the cold wooden floor hard, rolling, and it hurts. Goose pimples rise on the back of Keris’s arms from the freezing air. 

No. Just one of them. Her left arm isn’t cold.

“Kit?” Gull asks, sitting up in bed and throwing off the covers. She’s on full display, curvy and beautiful. “Come back to bed,” she coos.

“I… I dunno what’s happening!” Kit gasps. Her arm shrugs off her attempts to hold it back, and it grabs her by the back of the head, forcing her down to stare at the dirty wood. Her vision blurs. “I… d’you think I got the bone sickness?”

Someone’s carved something into the ground. A crude dragon, an unhappy face, and around the unhappy face are lots of other faces. All of them have big teeth.

Kit blinks, and the light is darker, the room filthier, and Gull’s not sitting up in bed. She’s still under the covers, snoring. There’s the scent of dreamdust, and another scent she knows well; the scent of men.

“Stop it!” she shouts at her arm, tears coming freely, her throat choked up.

Her arm slaps her around the face, grabbing onto the skin, and tearing at it. And Kit screams as her skin tears away, something else comes off too, leaving her-

* * *

**Break**  
-angry! So what if the mercenaries got a bit closer than usual last time? Kit’s fifteen now; she’s bigger, she can’t duck into little corners and hide like she used to. That’s all. She still outpaced ‘em, didn’t she? Still left ‘em tripping and sliding all over the polished bit of street outside Madame Marina’s after tipping a shelf of the oils and perfumes down on it! So what’s there to fucking nag at her about?

Gull can go shove it. Kit doesn’t wanna hear about her talk about ‘grief’ and ‘letting it out’ and Ra-

Swearing, Kit lashes out with a kick and knocks over a stall pole, dropping the canvas on the people inside. When the cursing shopkeeper struggles out, she meets him with an elbow to the face and a knee to the groin, then legs it round a corner and and scurries up a wall from window sill to door lintel to lantern strut before he can get his legs back under him and give chase.

Crouched near the edge of the roof, just out of sight of the people below, Kit Firewander bares her teeth and broods.

And another thing! What’s with this ‘reckless’ shit, huh? She’s not doing anything different from how she always has! It’s always worked up till now, and she’s bigger and faster than ever now! She’s got a new set of knives from Mister Chen; proper pig-slicers with long blades and wicked points! They’re Lookshyian steel and everything! There ain’t nothing that can catch her if she don’t wanna be caught; not without regretting it permanent-like!

Glaring out at the sea of buildings that makes up her world, Keris’s eyes alight on the edge of the Little Market, four or five blocks off.

Yeah. Yeah, and she can prove it, too. See if Gull keeps bitching at her about ‘taking more care’ when Kit comes and dumps a set of _real_ shinies in Chen’s lap, right in front of her. Stuff Gull could never get - stuff that needs someone willing to break a few wrists for it. ‘Oh Kit,’ she’ll whine, ‘I’m so worried about you, ever since Ra- ever since you started going out on your own and getting shit done, I’ve been acting like you’re a know-nothing kid wrapping yourself up for the clanking dumb mercenary fuckers’.

And then Kit’ll bring out a string of pearls or a bottle of swank Bag-wine or something and make her look stupid. That’ll show her.

Her left arm twinges as she sets off.

Fifteen minutes later, she’s scoping out her target. A drug shop on Lien Street supplied from Great Forks. Kit’s heard they use slaves there - and that some of the drugs they grow are rare and valuable things used for having visions and communing with the gods. That sounds expensive as hell - and it’ll let her score points with Liho if she comes back with a haul of ‘em. _They_ haven’t been wasting her time with sappy smothering crap like Gull has. Maybe they’ll even teach her about dream-questing for power if she brings something good back!

There are three guards; one on the door and two in the buildings, all in better armour than she’s used to; lamellar and chain. But that doesn’t matter. Rusted iron or red-painted steel; it’s still heavy crap that weighs them down. Kit and her knives are quick quick quick, and she can trip ‘em easy, stab one of the sellers, grab an armful of boxes from the back and leg it while they try to stop the bleeding. What are they gonna do; run after her in all that clank?

She edges closer, watching them out of the corner of her eye. There’s no way she can fit in here, of course. Lien’s upmarket, a street rat stands out like a sore thumb. She can see the guy on the door eyeing her. But Kit’s learned from Liho, and she knows how to hide one lie under another, how to mix truth and make falsehood from it. She keeps her distance from him, acts like she’s peering intently into the shop and its boring pots and vials of powder and liquid, and lets him notice the way she angles her body, using the reflection in the window to eye up the swanky eating-house across the road. The scent of roasted chicken wafts across from the open door, and she half-turns towards it, licking her lips, before remembering herself and snapping back to the window.

It’s not even an act. It _does_ smell really good. And so he buys it. It’s not his problem. He’s only contracted to guard this shop, and as long as she’s just using the window to scope out another target, he doesn’t care.

Kit loiters by the window, plays her role, waits for her moment... and takes it, darting in while he’s distracted.

It goes perfectly until it doesn’t.

She gets past the big lug on the door no problem and grabs a couple of lacquered wooden boxes, but her knife slides off the blue-haired merchant’s shirt like it’s made of steel. Still, he’s down, and she ducks under a grab from one of the mercenaries and rolls over the table to put it between them. The other mercenary lunges at her, and Kit dances out of the way and hooks her leg...

But this mercenary is quicker than the ones she’s used to, and she doesn’t trip easy. And the other one is round the table and pinning her in; blue-hair is grinning at her sharp-toothed and hungry. She ducks down and darts under the tables; abandoning the boxes but they’re _still on her;_ she can’t get away, where the fuck is her-

... distraction.

The jolt of loss makes her stumble as she comes up, and the female mercenary is _there_ , suddenly. Kit’s still trying to work out how she moved so fast when the woman’s cudgel slams into her left arm, catching it between the lead-weighted club and the edge of the table. There’s a horrible crack and a scream that isn’t hers and her arm is pointed the wrong way just above her elbow and something small and black and blurred tears off it and dives out past the door guard, barely dodging his attempt to grab it with a net he hadn’t had before, but Kit can’t wonder about that because the agony hits her like-

—

-three years ago, the first time she broke it. Fuck! Fuck fuck _fuck!_ She’d forgotten how much a broken arm hurt! Kit screams, slashes one of the Quay Dogs across the back of his hand, and kicks the one with the sledgehammer in the knee. Hard. Hard enough that the joint makes a sickening sound as it bends the wrong way. He goes down, howling, and she ducks under a punch and runs for her life.

Shit! The gangs would never have _dared_ do shit like this while Chen was still around! They knew she was one of his people; that hurting her would get them more heat than they could take. But he’s been dead for months now, and they’re getting cocky. Remembering old grudges. Looking to fill the power vacuum.

It was stupid of her to come here alone.

And fuck, she’s paying for it. Her arm is bad. It’s bent the wrong way again, same place as last time, and that hammer blow dislocated her shoulder. Badly. Kit’s seen fucked-up shoulders before; they’re easy to hurt and slow to heal and hers is very, very bad. It’s hanging wrong in the socket; every step she takes sends spikes of pain stabbing out from the break in her upper arm and the jolting of it up and down in her shoulder. She can feel the whole limb _shift_ and _tug_ where it connects to her body; the cradle of muscles and ligaments Calley had showed her in pictures all pulled out of shape. Even if she had access to Chen’s doctors, this would be bad. And she doesn’t anymore.

Every unnatural lurch makes her want to throw up. There are tears in her eyes. Her fingers burn from bloodied knuckles and shallow cuts, her feet are even worse from the ankles down. But she can’t stop running.

If they catch her, she’ll die.

* * *

**Helpless**  
Kit is twelve, and she’s dying. Maybe she’s already dead. Maybe she’s in hell, and that’s why it hurts so much. She can’t stand. She can’t even sit up. She can’t see through the tears. All she can do is suffer.

And she is suffering. Her throat feels like she’s taken razors to it - not just slashed it open, but peeled all the skin off the inside and drank salt water, and every time she vomits it hurts more than she thought was possible. Her skin burns one minute and freezes the next, and the pounding of her pulse makes her head swim. There’s a pain in her tummy that’s pressing inward on her stomach and out against her skin at the same time, like a heavy stone that’s growing bigger and heavier and trying to rip her apart and crush her. Her fingers feel like they’ve been flayed, her legs are itching and spasming in agony, there are spots and flares of sharp, aching _pain_ all over her and she can’t even move to touch them. She can’t move at all. She’s _tired;_ not just the kind of tired she gets from running around all day, but an exhaustion in every muscle and limb so strong that it hurts even to lie still.

She thinks maybe she’s screaming, but she can’t tell. The fever steals her senses and twists them against her, makes horrible shapes loom up around her with sharp teeth and shadowy cloaks, shifts the candlelight blue and the straw bed into rocks and needles. Kit gasps for air between her sobs, unable to even cry properly through the horribleness of everything.

She’s going to die. She’s going to die, she just knows it. She’s going to die here and the only one who’ll even care will be Rat. She already _has_ died, and she’s in hell now ‘cause she never prayed enough and the gods never cared when she did, and demons are going to eat her all up like in the stories and... and she almost wishes they’d get on with it so the pain would stop, but she’s so scared.

She’s so scared of dying.

Another indistinct figure looms over her, and she screams faintly with what’s left of her voice, flinching away from its huge silhouette and freakish proportions and too-wide mouth. She’s so weak she barely even manages to roll her head away, and blubbers with terror and snot and tears as it catches her head in its hand and forces her to look at it.

But it’s Rat’s voice that comes out of it, and when it bends close she can see the colour of his hair and make out his pale skin through her stinging eyes, and the hand that touches her is cool and small.

“Kit? Kit, listen. You’re gonna be okay, Kit. Just quit struggling! You’re killing yourself! Calley says the fever’s taking more energy than you got to fight it with! You gotta stop thrashing around, Kit! Lie real still and try’n sleep - an’ eat, too. I’ll get you soup and stuff if you promise you’ll lie still; it’ll make your throat feel real good again. I swear! You got that, Kit? Just do what I tell you, and you’ll be fine!”

She can hear the fear in his voice. She knows he thinks she’s dying too. That she’s gonna go the way Big Glem did, or List, or Bonnie Upster. The thought makes her break into sobs again; soft and too tired to wrack her little body, but laced with quiet despair.

“Dammit Kit, just... just don’t give up, ‘kay? I got more medicines from Calley to try, an’... fuck, I _told_ you not to drink outta the well down the street. I _told_ you to go to the one up the hill. But did you listen? No, course you fuckin’ didn’t! Had to go get scarlet fever, din’t ya? Now look at you!”

A cool hand presses against her forehead; blessed relief from her burning skin. She hears him sigh.

“Just... just don’t die, Kit.” Rat’s voice cracks as he says it. “Be my crazy friend who ain’t never let anything stop her. Don’t give up and die on me.” The hand pulls away, and she hears him move away. A door opens, and the shadows shift in terrifying ways; more dark figures looming up around her. But Kit forces herself not to scream. She’s not in hell. She’s not in hell, she’s just sick, and the monsters are just shadows, and she’s... she’s gotta be strong and hang on for Rat.

She can hang on for him. They promised each other. Together forever.

“I’ll be back with medicines and soups in a bit,” he says from the door. “Stay strong, Kit. And quit thrashing around. Keep calm, yeah? If you struggle, you’ll die.”

He leaves. And she's alone again, in the dark.

* * *

**Building Trust**  
Keris is seven, lurking up on the rooftops. It's hot up here, in the Wood sun, but there's the smell of rain in the air. She lies there in the warm, half dozing, wrapped around a half-empty punnet of apples. 

She’s not hungry. She’s not wet or cold. She’s even got her hands on a blanket. She has food, food that’ll last a few days, and maybe she’s even got someone who’ll help keep it safe from the other kids who’ll beat her up and take anything she has.

And it’s all due to the other kid. The red-haired, sunburned kid with the blue eyes who’s huddling up with her. While he distracted the seller, she pilfered the apples - and then they pulled the same trick to get this blanket too.

“See,” he gloats, tossing an apple from hand to hand, gappy teeth gleaming in the sun, “told you it was gonna work.”

“Yeah.” She wants to eat another sweet, sweet apple, but she feels so full she might burst.

“See? You gotta trust me.”

That’s enough that the wariness she’s learned since running away can peak its head through her happy, slow fullness. “I ain’t trusting you,” she says, hands balling into fists.

“Why not?”

“‘Cause you can’t trust people.”

“Why not?” The red apple dances between his hands.

“It don’t matter,” she snaps.

“Hey. Hey. You’re just like an alley cat, you know. A bitey kitten. But I ain’t got a reason to turn on you. We just snaffled a haul from Mena, and last time I tried that she cuffed me around the ear and sent me on my way. With my head ringing for the rest of the day.”

“You’re just gonna go run home back to your family once we’re done playin’,” she snaps.

“No I ain’t!”

“Yeah you are! Takin’ the apples with you. Or you’re gonna kick me or push me in the canal or you’re just doin’ all this because some other kid says you gotta do it to join their gang or… or… or…” she gasps for air, words falling over themselves.

The boy Rathan looks away. “I ain’t got no home to go back to. Ma kicked it when the sweating sickness came ‘round. And my aunt kicked me out, said she couldn’t keep another mouth around the place. She gave me to the Black Brotherhood, but they didn’t want me neither. I been on the streets since end of Air.” 

Keris feels an unfamiliar aching pang, but she forces it down. Anyone can come up with a sad story. “Yeah? So you’re a gang kid. Off to get me for the Red Blades or the Clay Street Boys!”” 

He glances back at her, eyes reddened, hands balled into fists. “I ain’t got nobody! Crappin’ gangs ‘round here don’t want a kid with red hair!” He tries to pull the blanket away from her. “So you aint wanting me neither, so I don’t get why you get to keep…”

“I’m sorry!” The word tears itself out of Keris’s lips. She’s crying too, crying because her stomach is full and she’s warm and she can feel the moment escaping her. “I just…” She bites her lip, then yanks up her sleeve. Shows the shiny red scar. “I was a slave. Then I ran.” Her vision blurs. “‘Least you know what happened to your ma and pa. I ain’t seen mine in...” she tries to count the passage of time, “years.”

“Never had no pa,” Rathan mutters. “Ma just had me. Me and my big sister. But sweating sickness took ‘em both.” 

Keris shudders. Something squirms in her memories. Something about sitting here with red-haired Rathan, talking about parents. “I ain’t gonna die from sweating sickness,” she says. “But… if I ain’t got no one and you ain’t got no one… well. I ain’t eaten like this in days.” She wipes her eyes on her filthy dress. “I guess we can team up. And maybe go stab them kids that try to take our stuff.”

Rathan’s eyes gleam, a bright blue glimmer. “Yeah. This is quite a wonderful meal that I haven’t had in such an awfully long time,” he says. “I was lucky to find you. We might really be able to go somewhere now.”

He stops tossing the apple from hand to hand, and bites down on it. Red juices run down his chin as he swallows. “Oh, yes.”

Keris groans, her stomach aching. She can’t watch this. She’s feeling so full that she just doesn’t feel like any more apples. “So, are we a team?”

“Yeah.” The boy sits back. “Yeah, we are, my street kitten.”

“I ain’t no one’s kitten.”

“Sure thing, kitty.”

Keris grows. No one gets to call her ‘Kitty’. “I hate you.”

“No you don’t,” he says, a cheeky grin on his lips. 

“I do! If you tease me, I ain’t staying!”

“How ‘bout ‘Kit’, then? You gonna glare at me for callin’ you ‘Kit’?”

She does so. “If you call me ‘Kit’, I’m callin’ you ‘Rat’. An’ I still hate you for it.”

“Yeah, I don’t believe it. We’re made to be a team, Kitty. So don’t go looking for things that will only hurt you,” Rat says, playing with his hair tie. It’s the same colour as the cloudless sky above them. “It’s just going to make things worse. Just stay here with me. S’better this way. I won’t leave you if you don’t want me to.”

Kit frowns, tasting metal. She’s sweating and she doesn’t know why. “Why would I want you to leave?”

He grins, the sun catching his teeth. “Got it in one, Kit. Just go to sleep.”

* * *

**Offerings and Communion**  
Kit is eighteen, and so is Rat, and there’s something weird in that thought but there’s no time to dwell on it ‘cause they’re almost late! The two of them pile through the door just as the noon clamour goes up around the city, her dragging on her outer robes and him touching up his makeup in a little hand mirror as best he can at a hasty jog. It's one of his girl days, so he looks prettier than normal, and he’s warm and safe against her side as they press together to fit. Her arm catches against something sharp and pinchy on his outfit, so Kit trips him in revenge as they make for the stairs. His curses follow her as she runs up them, laughing and throwing mocking jibes back over her shoulder.

He’s got longer legs than her, though - which is cheating! He takes them two at a time, and catches up at her just as she reaches the blue door of the loft in this tenement block full of Chen’s trusted people, and they size each other up evaluatively.

“Your lipstick’s smudged,” Rat says, and Kit glares at how his is somehow still impeccable. “Here, lemme fix it. Anything on me?”

Kit runs an eye over him. “Your robes are all messed up,” she offers. He scowls.

“Well whose fault is that, then?”

“Hey! S’not like my lipstick ain’t yours! And you almost made us late! Next time you try to pull me back into bed when we got somewhere to be, I’m elbowing you in the kidney, see if I don’t!”

He smirks at her, cupping her jaw with a firm, cool hand and rubbing at her mouth where her blue lipstick has smeared. In return, she tugs his joyful priestess robes back into something resembling order, and dusts them off where the floor downstairs has left greyish-brown powdery dirt clinging to the cheap fabric.

“Can’t say it weren’t fun though, can you?” he teases silkily, and Kit feels heat rising to her cheeks against her will. She thumps him on the chest and glares. But before they can start bickering, the door swings open, framing a beautiful figure with a slightly inhuman silhouette and swirling, hypnotic eyes that are pools of oilslick colour.

“Sweet little things,” Liho croons. “Are you going to come in, or will you wait out there for the noon clamour to end? Because if you choose that, you’ll be late.”

Both teens yelp and dart past her, into the richly decorated space. Gull is there, busy at the cramped kitchenette huddled in the corner, mixing a pot of something fragrant and herbal on the stove. The scent is potent in the small space of Liho’s home, mixing with their perfumes and incenses. There’s dreamdust and spice and menthol lying heavy on the air, and they tickle Kit’s nose even as they make her head spin. She can feel a layer of the fumes build up on her lips and tongue as she breathes in; thick and cloying and heady.

Gull doesn’t seem to be much affected, and she turns around with a smile; leaving whatever the concoction is simmering and coming over for a hug and a deep kiss. “I’m so proud of you,” she whispers in Kit’s ear. “You’ve really done well in your training, darling. It’s past time you learned this.”

Kit wriggles happily, blushes, and pretends to shrug off the praise. She can tell from Gull’s indulgent smile that she’s not fooled, but she leaves it at that instead of satisfying Kit’s craving for more. Rat gets his own hug and kiss, and the two of them are sat down on the divan by the window while Gull flits around the loft setting up burners and adjusting wards and tending to her pot of whatever-it-is.

Liho doesn’t move to help. They slink over to the luxurious, velvet-lined armchair they used to give Kit lessons from, recline into it, and watch the two young joyful initiates with wyldpool eyes and an inscrutable expression. That ever-present little smile playing around their lips looks half nice, half nasty. One of their four arms holds a shallow dish of alcohol, another toys with a loose thread on the armrest of the chair; tugging it this way and that with lazy, clinical precision until it breaks. The other two are folded, one drumming a thoughtful beat on the elbow of the other.

“So then,” they say after ten minutes or so of staring, as Gull begins to wind down. They’ve tested Kit and Rat like this before, and the weight of this occasion has given both the fortitude not to break or start fidgeting. Or have any surreptitious pinching wars to get the other to flinch. It would probably amuse Liho, but this isn’t the time for it, and it’s not worth the risk of making them annoyed at their lack of focus.

“My silver-tongued little Rat,” says Liho, each word sweet, possessive poison. “My quick-witted little Kit. Well done, the both of you. You’ve proven yourselves above the usual breed of street trash, and not entirely awful at the spirit arts.”

“Liho,” Gull chides them gently, resting a hand on their oddly-structured shoulder. “More than ‘not entirely awful’, I think. Kit has taken wonderfully to wards and rites and cantrips. And Rat can charm even the surliest of spirits out of a blessing or two. They’re certainly worthy of the deeper mysteries.”

“So you tell me, my dear, so you tell me,” sighs Liho. “But I’ve been disappointed before. We’ll see, I suppose. And it will be interesting enough even if they fail.” This time, the smile is definitely a little malicious. Part of Kit bristles at the implication of Liho taking any enjoyment out of watching her screw up, and vows to do so well they _have_ to admit she’s brilliant. Another part watches in envious admiration at how well her part-time mentor can make a friendly expression drip with implied threat and hidden malice.

“You’re gonna teach us about spirit-hosting, right?” Rat says eagerly. He’s much more Liho’s student where Kit is closer to Gull, and Liho favours him with a sharp little smirk and a nod of approval that makes Kit burn with jealousy.

“Very good, darling; you’ve been reading ahead,” they say. “Yes, it’s time you learned about the oldest and holiest of the duties of a joyful priestess. We give praise to the spirits with worship, and we give pleasure to men with our bodies. But both are degenerate forms of our original traditions from centuries back. Once, before the reaving, we held shrines and sacred ground and temples. We were the bridge between the realms of spirit and flesh, and we gave our bodies to the gods as anchors for them in this pitiful, pathetic world.”

Kit’s eyes widened in shock. For the first time she could remember, Liho’s expression wasn’t a smirk or a sneer or that malicious little self-satisfied smile. There was a kind of rapture on their face instead; a transcendent dreamy bliss that seems to make them rise above and away from the scent-thick air of the apartment and the muggy air of Wood outside it. They look ecstatic, and even less human than usual.

“There are rituals to let spirits into your flesh, ways to let them use your physical form as a vessel that they fill,” Gull explained, measuring out two cups of the heady brew she’d been making. “It’s a sacred rite. And it feels better than anything.” Her eyes slide closed in sinful, decadent recollection, and she bites her lip in the way she does when Kit’s pampering her just the way she likes. “You just... lie back and let them in. Let it happen, and enjoy the rush. There’s nothing that feels as good.”

“There are benefits for us, too,” Liho sighs happily. Their chaospool eyes swirl and mix, and with a toss of their head they pull their hair loose. It’s white at the moment, with vividly coloured leaves and feathers growing from it - but that’s likely to change within the next month or two, whenever they next quest into Firewander. “Beautiful ones. Oh, my darlings. My weak little mortal darlings. Wouldn’t you like to be stronger? To be something purer; _better_ than grunting things of meat and blood; barely a step away from filthy animals? You can be. Hosting spirits in your flesh, letting the wyldtide into your blood - it elevates you, empowers you. Sets you above the rank dross of humanity and begins to change you into something... more.”

“It sounds like dream-questing,” Rat says quietly, looking between Liho and Gull as the latter brings the cups over. The concoction glistens like oil over water, and seems colourless at a glance. But when the light from the lantern hits it, it’s like there are veils and currents of faint watercolour dye all swirling round each other without mixing together inside it, and images dancing on the greasy surface that wave tantalising promises of visions and knowledge.

“It is, a little,” agrees Liho. Their voice is reverent and far-away, and Kit gets the feeling they’re not really looking at her and Rat so much as whatever burning need drives them to despise humanity so, and want to get away from it. She can even kind of agree with them on that. Humanity is mostly shit, from her experience of it. Being something else - anything else - has got to be better. And don’t even the Immaculates say that the dragons of Lookshy and the Realm are what humans hope to be reborn as, if they’re really really good?

“Dream-questing is a path to power,” Liho continues dreamily. “It’s a sacred act of madness; you let go of sanity and plummet through dreams or chaos or the thoughts of higher beings. And if your need is great and your purpose is pure and your luck holds, you come out wiser and stronger and _reforged_. It’s accepting insanity as a crucible for change; laying yourself open and helpless to be broken down and restructured. Sometimes you use chaos,” they gestured negligently at their inhuman body, “but invoking and hosting a greater being is another way. The method doesn’t matter. Only the process.”

“Just remember,” Gull puts in, half-admiring and half-chiding, “dream-quests and spirit-hostings are sacred acts. They ain’t things to be made light of. You do ‘em too often, or without a good enough reason, and they’ll break you down and not bother building you back up; they’ll leave you that way. You do ‘em when there’s a need, when you must, when you got a reason. When there’s something particular you’re lookin’ for. It’s _risky_ , you understand? What comes out ain’t never what goes in, and sometimes that change ain’t for the better. You can fail a dream-quest - and you ain’t likely to fail one more’n once.”

Both Kit and Rat are pale now, and Gull shakes her head and smiles at them, her expression gentling. “Now, my loves. I din’t mean to scare you. Just... don’t ever try this when me or Liho ain’t here to watch you. Preferably Liho; they got far more experience at it. I brewed you a little somethin’ to smooth things over this first time - it’ll expand your minds a bit, open your eyes to the world. But be sure to keep in mind what you’re lookin’ for! Hold to your purpose.”

“If you don’t,” Liho smiles silkily, “... well. Failed dream-quests never end well for the quester, but some interesting things _do_ come out of them, more often than not. Do try not to disappoint me, either way.”

Rat takes the cup she sets before him, glances at Kit for a moment with an uncertain smile, and then tips it back and drinks. His eyes glaze over for a moment, then he gives a convulsive shudder and gasps.

“Oh...” he breathes, staring at something that isn’t there, arching his back and letting out a low moan. “Oh, it’s... _amazing_. Kit, you gotta... gotta try this...” His words tail off into a slur as his eyes flutter closed, and he starts to sway slightly as if dancing to some unheard and ethereal music.

“Here,” Gull whispers, offering the other cup to Kit with a smile. “Drink up, sweetheart. It will feel wonderful, I promise you.”

Kit takes the rough clay bowl, cradling it in her hands uncertainly. The scent is even stronger now; overpowering and stifling, enough to make her choke or start to gag. She forces the reaction down with an effort of will, focusing on breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth. She wants this. She does. She wants to make Gull proud of her. She wants to experience what Rat’s feeling along with him. She wants to stick in in Liho’s craw and prove she can excel at this, and also maybe make her cruel, clever, captivating teacher look at her indulgently and teach her more about how to be mean in the fun way and play the petty normal people like whistles.

But...

Looking down at the iridescent liquid in the bowl, something still makes her hesitate. Nervousness? Caution? Some deep-seated instinct?

“... can... can I go outside for a bit first?” she asks slowly. “I just... I’m getting a headache from all the smoke, and...”

“Drink it, girl,” Liho snaps, their androgynous face suddenly twisting with annoyance. “Stop wasting time dithering and drink it. You’ve been trained for this, primed for this. The spirits have given you all of this. You owe them your body. Drink!”

Kit’s hackles rise, and she looks up mulishly. “No!” she says. “In fact... no! I ain’t gotta do what you say! I ain’t even gotta listen to you! You’re a...” She looks down at herself, face screwing up in confusion at her age before her gaze shifts back to Liho in growing, murderous rage. “You ain’t even with us right now! You sold us out to Honest Mai after Chen died! You’re a bloody _traitor!”_

Her knives come out in a flash, and she tosses the drug aside as she advances, wrathful and murderous. Gull scrambles out of the way. Liho pales. Rat makes no move to stop her, and that’s wrong, that’s wrong twice over, because he’d always try to step in at times like this, and also...

“An’... an’ Rat disappeared four years ago! He shou’nt be here either! Tha’s prolly one of _your_ tricks! You’re messin’ with my head, tryin’a feed me somethin’ that’ll mess with it more! You prolly already fed it to Gull! I should _kill_ y-”

* * *

**Tell Them What They Want To Hear**  
Kit is thirteen, and it’s a wet muggy day. She’s glad she’s in the temple. Well, that’s what Gull calls this small room, with an unfolded portable shrine and a large bed stacked with pillows. The air is thick with incense and perfume, and the blinds are shut.

The older woman has prettied her up, done her hair nicely and helped her put on white makeup that’s so thick it’s cracking, paint her lips and eyes blue. It’s all to please the gods, she says. Because Gull’s a street witch, just like Old Cally, though she doesn’t like the term. She calls herself a joyful priestess with a wink.

Kit’s heard other names for what Gull is. Rude words hollered at her down the street.

“See,” Gull says, carefully lighting the first incense stick, and directing Kit to do the same, “the gods are just like men. And women too.” 

Kit blanches under the white and blue make-up Gull’s carefully applied. “What do you mean by that?”

“Light it.” Gull settles back, legs tucked under herself, and wraps her hands up under her long blue sleeves. “Not like that. Not quite. But they want to be told that they’re handsome - or beautiful. They want you to tell them that they’re kind, that they’re generous, that they deserve all the praise you’re giving them. That’s what you need to do. It’s one of the reasons why Mister Chen pays me a retainer. It’s what I do.”

“But…” Kit tries to get the shapes of the words into her head. “They’re gods.” The older woman looks down at the girl, waiting for her to continue. Kit wrings her hands together. “You’re not meant to…”

“Not meant to?” Gull laughs. “They tell you you ain’t meant to steal, don’t they?”

“Yeah, but they don’t know…”

“Yeah, and that’s it. Them monks and nuns in their temples don’t know how things are.”

The door swings open behind her, blowing out the candles. Kit glances back, and her eyes widen in horror.

A tall, thin figure shrouded in ruffles, ribbons, and expanses of torn fabrics has entered. She - it’s a she, Kit is nearly sure - takes another step forward. She has a knife so sharp that there’s a thin red halo around its tip, and it’s dripping blood. And her dress is bloody. It’s splattered with gore. Each footstep… no. There are no steps. No feet. Just a pillar of light and ribbons and more blood.

This _thing_ has no face. Just a mask. A white mask that’s creased into a frown. And its entire posture radiates annoyance. Kit can read its expression horribly well, and she knows somehow that it’s here for her. It’s been looking for her. It wants to know why she’s in here, playing silly games. And why she scared Iris.

Kit gasps, her chest a little knot of fear. “Th-th-the Emm’sary,” she gasps, backing away. She knocks over the shrine as she backs up, and the candles spill. The blankets light up. Gull finally turns and she screams as loud as she can.

The masked figure sighs. Then it’s moving faster than Kit can see - only that’s not quite true, is it? - and it has that awful knife through Gull’s shoulder. Its mask creases up into a smile. Kit can read it. Gull is… it wants Gull to tell it how to do something. Something about Kit.

But she doesn’t stay to watch, because she throws herself through the shutters like a street rat who knows how to stay alive. She grabs onto the shutter handle, and lets it carry her skinny body around. Then she drops down, grabbing onto the gutter. Her fingers barely protest and with a grunt of effort she scrabbles up the vertical wall, finding impossible purchase. 

Kit doesn’t even think about how she did it when she’s up on the greying roof. She just sprints, arms and legs pumping as she vaults a chimney stack and leaps over the gap to the next rooftop.

The masked figure leans out the window. Blood oozes down from its sodden gloves. Down the wall. Hissing and bubbling. It tilts its head, seeing where the shutter banged into the wall and the lack of movement in the crowd.

Then it leaps out the window onto a raindrop and dancing up the falling droplets. It sets chase.

* * *

**Get Away**  
Keris is seven, and she’s running. Legs pumping, she vaults over a table, scattering clothing and getting the lilac-skinned woman behind the stall hollering at her. She doesn’t listen, though. She’s got half a cooked chicken wrapped up in her smock and though it’s burning her front, that pain is less than the pain of hunger and the still-raw burns of river tar on her arm where the slave-brand was.

There’s a bit of her that’s still flinching. Still afraid of the beating she’s going to get for st-stealing. But she’s too hungry to care. Too hungry and too angry. No one tells her what to do! Not anymore! 

Saji said she was too chicken to do it! Too chicken to grab a chicken from the stall! She said that if Keris got them food, she could hang with them and they’d be her friends. They’re bigger than her, and most of ‘em are older so she thinks it’s a pretty good deal.

Her breath is burning in her throat, but she scrambles down the quayside steps. She runs her hand along the verdigris-coated walls, down to the underside of the basalt and brass bridge, where the other kids are waiting.

“I got it!” she cheers, producing the food. It’s left her clothing greasy and stained, but she did it! She showed they gotta like her!

Saji snatches the chicken out of her hands. “Ha!” she crows. “She did it. We’re eating well tonight.”

Keris beams at them, gap-toothed. They’re all grinning. Only, there’s something wrong. “Well, c’mon,” she says, reaching out for a leg.

And then she shoves Keris to the ground. “Nah, it’s mine now,” she jeers.

Her eyes narrow; her stomach yawns. “I got that, so I get some of this!” she says, breaths coming quick.

“Yeah. So if you wanna join us, you gotta get us more than a chicken. What about…” she glances over at Rala. “What d’you want?”

“Get me some o’ that green cloth,” she says, smirking.

“Yeah, that! So go on, Kallis.”

“Keris,” Keris snarls.

“Get Rala some cloth. So…”

Keris screams and tries to punch her. But Saji’s much taller than her and just shoves her hard so she goes down into the canal. She hits the filthy water hard, and swallows a mouthful. Flailing, she tries to work out which way is up. She used to swim in the river _she knows how to swim why is it so cold and_ …

She surfaces, and it’s raining.

It’s raining blood. Red splatters down on her. It stains the oily water.

They’re dead. They’re all dead. She watches as Saji’s head tumbles down, sinking into the deep indigo water.

It’s here.

The masked figure in tattered Bag finery, soaked in blood, with the knife that’s just killed all the kids she wanted to like her.

Shaking its head, the masked figure shows its disapproval. Why is she being so stupid, its expression seems to ask. She’s here to get Keris out. She gestures with her knife. She just needs to stab everything in here and then-

The water drags Keris down, down away from this nightmare.

* * *

**This Can’t Be Happening**  
Kit is seventeen, and the old break in her left arm spikes with sudden, intense pain as she lands on the balls of her feet. Her breath hitches - that was far, _far_ worse than the usual kind of ache or twinge it throws at her when the weather’s bad. But then the pain slides away again, and she forgets in favour of advancing on Chen.

“What’re you doing?” she growls, bristling. He’s standing over Gull; crumpled on the ground, and short though he is, he looms over both women right now. He’s taller than Kit, that’s for sure, and stockier too - he was a bare-knuckle brawler in his youth, and he’s lost none of that.

“This ain’t your business,” he growls back, adjusting the blue cloth he wears around his neck. There’s blood splattered on it. On the ground, Gull is horrifyingly still. “Just go back to your room, kid. The one I pay for. The one that means you ain’t out on the streets. Turn around and walk away and quit causing trouble, an’ I’ll forget all this.”

Kit glances back over her shoulder uncertainly. They’re in the storehouse on the corner of Essel and Tanner Lane; the secure one near Chen’s office that he uses for important stuff that don’t take up too much space. Three floors; the bottom two all stone blocks and thick walls, with a wooden extension built on top of them that juts out over the street a ways. It used to be a smith’s, but Chen’s done up the insides to make it more secure; added guards and wards and thick locked doors.

But Kit is on _this_ side of all of that. She doesn’t have to deal with the defences on this place. She’s right here, right now. Sure, she could back out and go home and sleep in her nice warm bed. But Gull is hurt. Gull’s been hurt _by Chen_.

“No,” she says quietly, and advances; angling to put herself between the stocky crime lord and her crumpled g-girlfriend. “No! I seen you hit her! You hurt her real bad! Why’d you do that? What’d she do to deserve that? I ain’t leavin’ till she’s safe!”

For someone who lets her get away with sassing him; Chen doesn’t take outright defiance well. He never has. His face twists and creases up in ugly rage, and he hefts a cudgel menacingly.

“I said _this ain’t your business_ , kid,” he says, raising his voice. “You keep pesterin’ me and I won’t just hurt you. All your little luxuries I give you? Your coca, your lodgings, your food? I’ll take ‘em all back. Outta your hide if I have to. I _made_ you, kid. Ain’t you got it good right now? Ain’t you happy? I can take it all away again. Shut up and stop makin’ such a fuss, go _behave_ and quit askin’ questions. Or I’ll break you, and you’ll be miserable again.”

Teeth bared and eyes wide, Kit stands over Gull’s still, still form and wordlessly draws her knife. Her arm stabs at her. Her fingers prickle with phantom pain; memories of hard fists and harder clubs slammed down on them by sharp-eyed shopkeepers when she was alone on the streets and vulnerable. Her calves are throbbing painfully, too - she must have taken the drop from the window too fast in her haste to get between Chen and Gull.

But she stands her ground nonetheless. Stands up for herself. Stands up for her love. Stands up as Chen swings the cudgel through the air in broad, intimidating strokes. Waiting for him to swing it at her, for the exact moment to dodge that’ll give her an opening...

The blood-soaked masked figure takes his arm off at the shoulder. Honestly, her stance communicates as she spins around with the momentum and slashes a vertical line from his collarbone to his hip. He was getting really boring! Just posturing like that and trying to get Mama to go back under into the dreaming. Which is dumb, ‘cause she was already waking up and starting to spot the lies mixed in with the truth. Like how Chen didn’t have a cudgel at first, then suddenly did. Or how her arm got broken only minutes ago and now it’s pretending to be healed again - and not well enough to hide all the pain. She should really just wake the rest of the way up and-

* * *

**Help Me**  
Kit is twelve and-

The masked figure wags her finger at the world. Uh uh uh, she gestures. Keris is still an old lady. She might be lying that she looks and sounds like she’s twelve, but she was looking and sounding like she was seventeen a moment ago. And the masked figure was _talking_. About how Mama should just wake up and help her finish everyone off here.

She tilts her head, looking around the empty room - empty, save for the terrified girl and the-

The masked figure sighs, and drives her knife into the half-built, soft-edged wall.

The world is bleeding. It oozes from the walls. Creeping down the corners. Kit watches, wide-eyed, sure this must be a nightmare. The moon is oozing blood, and Venus in the sky is far, far too large; a burning blue sun. She screams and screams and-

Yeah, no. The masked figure shakes her head. Mama isn’t actually screaming. Look at her. That’s you.

It’s just a Calibration nightmare, Kit assures herself. Just the result of too much cheese on a full stomach even if it feels so horribly, horribly real.

The smiling mask isn’t smiling in happiness. It works the knife in deeper, cutting open the wall until its guts spill out. No, she gestures with a flick of her ribbon hair. You’re bleeding. She knows you’re there.

Keris is twenty-one and this evil masked demon is trying to k-

The world shudders as the ribbon-wraith dashes from the corner, peeling away the blood-soaked walls to reveal it is salt-stained basalt underneath. Look at you, she gestures as she stabs it again. Look at your lies that this is Mama’s past. You’re lying twice over, really, because this isn’t really her past and this isn’t the world you made. You’re just dressing up what she’s doing to this place.

Blood oozes from her knife and down her lanky legs as she paces towards the huddled-up girl in the corner. Get up and stop being so stupid, her motions growl. You scared Iris and you scared everyone else and no one has time for you to sit around being stupid, so just cut away these useless memories.

She grabs Kit’s sleeve, and yanks her to her feet. Kit looks away. In terror. 

The demon slaps her. Calesco told her all kinds of things and she’s having to remember them all to help here, her angrily tilted head indicates. She’s not looking away in terror. Don’t listen to him.

Kit isn’t scared, no. She doesn’t want to think about it, but it’s squirming up in her guts. It’s not fear. It’s shame.

She screams, and tries to pull away from the red-soaked figure. Only she doesn’t pull away. She pulls that _thing_ into her. It spirals away, sucked down into her until she’s soaked in the blood that once covered it.

Chen is dead at her feet, on black stone and sand. She’s covered in his blood. It drips from her hands. It’s splattered down her front. It’s pooling around her bare feet. And she’s filled with regret. Regrets for what she's done. She thinks she’s done the wrong thing.

“No no no,” Keris moans. “That’s not how it went, that’s not how it-”

Except that is how it went. Isn’t it? Standing here over Chen’s body. Covered in his blood. Watching her future drain away as everything goes wrong.

There’s a voice in her head.

“How did it really go, child?”


	13. Interlude 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t often put notes into the story. But Kit Firewander’s life prior to Exaltation was not a happy one, and so I need to give a warning for what you’re about to read.
> 
> This chapter contains references to or depictions of child slavery, major character death, underage sexual activity, teen pregnancy, miscarriage, prostitution, graphic violence, torture, drug use and addiction, mental illness, abuse, rape, body horror and attempted suicide. I think - I hope - I have handled things respectfully, or at least not callously. But it bears repeating; this is not a happy backstory. Nexus is not a nice place to live.
> 
> The conditions of Nexus as described here take considerable inspiration from the conditions experienced by the poor in Victorian London. The primary source of reference for life for women in the violent and precarious situations outside “respectable” society was _‘The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper’_ , by Hallie Rubenhold.

**Trapped**  
When Keris was six years old, she hated.

She hated the place she lived; the rich house with fluffy furniture she had to clean and shiny metal she had to polish and cold hard floors she had to scrub. She hated the people who lived there, who gave her orders and looked down on her from above and kicked or cuffed her when she was too slow. She hated the climate; muggy and smelly and where she could never ever see the blue of the sky.

She hated the dreams she had of her home on fire behind her. She hated that they weren’t coming every night anymore - or even every week. She hated that she was starting to forget what her papa’s face looked like, or what all her cousins’ names were. She hated that she’d gotten good at polishing spoons and cleaning out household nooks and crannies until they sparkled.

She hated the woman who owns the house, who bought her. She hated the house staff who ran it and worked for her. She hated the food they gave her, the cot she slept on, the accent everyone talked in, the way her whole body hurt at the end of the day. She hated the slave-brand on her arm that said she was _owned_ and the smock she had to wear that left it bare for all to see. 

She hated the days she didn’t hurt even more. She hated the ‘foreign’ clothes they dressed her up in that were nothing like what she used to wear. She hated the way they paraded her around like a pet, carrying one drink at a time to towering adults who laughed and talked in confusing words and superior tones. She hated the bruises on her back from the time she dropped a plate, and the memory of the pain. They said they didn’t want her scarred, but that just meant she slept on her face that night.

When Keris was six years old, she hated her life and everything in it.

“Oh, child. It was not just hate, was it? It was fear. This was where the serpent formed.”

* * *

**The First Day**  
Keris was seven, and she was free. There was an ugly burn from river-tar on her left arm where the brand used to be, and the pretty clothes that she had to wear back _there_ were shredded and torched and she didn’t care at all because she was _free_.

She was free, and she had a place all her own, and there was somebody in it who wasn’t her.

Grey eyes glared down hatefully from the plank that rested on two ledges either side of the alley. It was a boy about her age, dressed as scruffily as her but not as dirty.

He was bigger than her, though. And he didn’t look as hungry. And he had a beltpouch with something in it. He was looking at the piles of junk at the streetside end of the short gap between two buildings.

They were empty. Keris had already scavenged everything scavengable from them, which wasn’t much.

But they were _her_ piles. Piles of rubbish dumped here by the carpenters and smiths who worked in the area, between two looming apartment buildings whose ground floors had been built long, long ago of imperishable yellow stone. Keris knew nothing of the ones who had built these structures, and the stone was barely yellow under the filth of Nexus and the layers upon layers of graffiti. All she knew was that this boy was in her place and she wanted rid of him.

Baring her teeth, she shifted the sharp iron nail around in her fist as she waited for him to work his way towards the river until he was underneath her. Then, while he was distracted by another pile of junk, she dropped on him from two metres up. He wasn’t completely oblivious - he heard the plank rattle and looked up - but he wasn’t quick _enough_. The impact drove him to the floor and knocked all the wind clean out of him.

“Wait!” he gasped hoarsely as Keris brandished the nail. “Wait, I got food! I got food nearby! Not on me! I can tell you where!”

She hesitated, and waited for him to get the rest of the coughing and gagging out of the way.

“Shoes, too,” he croaked once he was done. “Jus’... just hear me out, ‘kay? Whatchu doing here, anyway? This alley’s shit.”

Baring her teeth, Keris brandished the nail again. “S’ _mine_ ,” she snarled.

“Why d’you even want a place like this?” he asked, bewildered. His eyes, she noticed, were blue. The bright, light colour reminds her of the sky back... back how it was s’posed to be. Away from the smog-filled clouds here.

“Don’t you wanna be somewhere nicer?” he asked. The nail was still very close to his face, so he made no effort to get her off him, but he stared up at her intently. “This place is awful. Why do this to yaself when you could live somewhere swank?”

She bared her teeth, jerking all her meagre weight down on the hand on his chest to drive the breath out of him again. Swank places were like _Kasseni’s_ house. She weren’t _never_ going back somewhere like that. She’d d- she’d _kill_ first.

“Okay okay okay,” he wheezed hastily. “Then... then warm. How ‘bout somewhere warm? You wanna be warm? An’ fed; I tol’ you I got food. Safe? I know ‘bout the gangs ‘round here; I can tell you how to get in with ‘em-” His eyes flicked across her face; watching, thinking, reading her. “Or... or keep outta their way, I can tell you that too. You’re all alone in this alley... you want friends? I can be your friend! You want that? Or mebbe you wanna get outta this city; I can help you there too-”

“Shuddup!” Keris snarled at him; feeling tears gather in her eyes. He was throwing too many things at her too fast; things she wanted, things she hated, things she wasn’t sure about or hadn’t ever even thought about. She screamed at him to let some of the frustration out, right in his face. He flinched and squeezed his eyes shut, but still stayed very, very still. Even his breathing under her was careful. He was forcing himself to take tiny breaths and not disturb her where she was crouched on top of him or get his throat too close to the nail.

They stayed like that for another moment of silence. He cracked an eye open and looked up at her again with that intense gaze, and she could almost feel things whirring around in his head as he tried to figure out how to get out of her killing him. But he didn’t move, or make another sound. Just watched her and waited.

Keris tried to think about what he said. Food did sound good. Warmth, too. And avoiding the gangs - she weren’t joining any of ‘em, not after they pushed her around and made fun of her when she tried. She’d done all she could to get them to like her, and they’d just taken her stuff and shoved her in the canals and mocked her.

Fuck the gangs. She didn’t need friends. She _didn’t_.

A sound that wasn’t a chuckle, because there was too much sorrow in it. “You do, child. You always have. I wondered once why Eko was the first to form. Now I know.”

“Show me your food,” she demanded, hopping back off him quickly so that he couldn’t try to grab her as she took her crude weapon away. “An’ if you try to pull anything, I’ll gut you! See if I don’t!”

With a few coughs and a groan of pain, he pulled himself to his feet. Keris could see him eyeing the mouth of the alley and her, thinking over whether he could make a run for it. She wasn’t sure whether she’d let him go if she did. She didn’t really _want_ to kill him, not for basically no reason. But what if he held a grudge about her hurting him and came back with his mates to hurt her more?

He was still watching her as she warred with herself. Something about the way he looked at her felt... she wanted to bristle at it and hit him for how _knowing_ it looked. Like he knew something about her that she didn’t. Like he pitied her, even. After a long moment where her hackles started to rise, he seemed to come to a decision and held out his hand.

“Okay,” he said. “Come on then. Food’s this way. I’ll tell you how we’ll get it while we walk.”

* * *

** Prayer and Bitterness **  
And so that was life on the streets. Keris became Kit, Rathan became Rat. Two orphans, living wild and feral on the Nexan streets - and if they had no one else, that just meant they clung to each other even harder. They had the run of Firewander, that wretched, squalid part of Nexus where the bones of the city poked through from ancient years; where fey things lived in certain streets and where the merchant princes in their lordly palaces up in Bastion didn’t care to look.

After all, some would say that life in Firewander was a punishment harsher than even the cruellest slave-driver could enact.

But to these two kids, Firewander was their life. Oh, they would go to other places in the city as they needed. Nighthammer had the docks where great hulks carrying goods would show up, and when they docked the two of them would steal handfuls of coal to hoard for winter or sell to smiths. They learned just enough of several languages to learn how to guide sailors to the blue-painted houses of the Harlotry - earning a handy coin or a tossed husk of bread depending on the place and the generosity of the madam. In Nexus proper they filched food from the Little Market and in Sentinel’s Hill Rat found them a man who’d pay for tales of Nexus and what the word on the street was. Out on the sprawling slum-towns that floated on the river, trapped in Nexus’s orbit, they stole fish from the boats and got chased by foul-mouthed fishermen for their troubles.

But none of those places were Firewander, and like marbles on a canvas sheet, they would always find themselves back in the slums they knew. They knew where the roof bridges were over by Cherry Blossom Street, they knew how to cut through the alleys near Fox Street on the blackest of nights, and they fought and lied and charmed their way through the other street gangs. They learned how to taste chaos on the air and when it was safe to scavenge for scraps in the streets where the colours weren’t quite right and the weather took several minutes longer to arrive.

It wasn’t a kind existence, but Kit and Rat were smart and cunning and had a streak of viciousness that let them eke out an existence in a city with no laws. They stole flowers off graves to weave into garlands to sell, they ran messages for shop-keepers and polished rocks for keen-eyed merchants. They lived under bridges, in squats in abandoned tenements and scraped together coin to rent rooms from adults who sometimes looked kindly on a pair of orphans. They adapted to the flow of Civilities from the Council, 

And they always knew where to find the charity of the pious.

On Waterdays the temple down by Three Pike Road welcomed all comers, so they got up before dawn and queued until they each got one of the little tokens that let them into the sermon. This time they drew the noonday sermon, which was the best. 

They showed up ahead of time, and got split up for the bathing. The communal baths were down in the basements of the building, down in the old city and the walls were nothing like the whitewashed brick of the main structure. The monks said something about purity, but Kit didn’t listen to that. Not anymore. Because if she needed to have a bath to be pure, then that meant she was impure normally and fuck that! Not that she’d say that in front of the rough-handed nuns who manned the baths and were fast to scrub down anyone who looked like they weren’t trying. Say that kind of thing - or swear or chatter - and they’d wash her mouth out with their soap.  
  
Still, a bath you didn’t have to pay for was a bath, even if the water was barely lukewarm, and they sprinkled fleabane on her clothes while she was cleaning so that was a bit of luck. Sure, it didn’t half smell foul, but it did seem to keep the fleas away, probably because the oil stunk so bad.

“Consider this,” the head nun, who had to raise her voice to be heard over the noise of Nexus. Three Pike Road Temple was a temple in the city, and that meant that sounds drifted over the wall that wrapped around the cramped structure and its vegetable gardens. “It is desire that chains us. It is want that holds us in the world. It is the desire to put one’s self above the order of things, to step outside the natural cycle, which causes us misery. Does the wind suffer? No, for it does only what its nature demands of it. Do the canals cry? No, for the water in them does not seek to rise up above the hills. To seek that which you cannot have and want for more than you should causes only suffering. Therefore, release it. Set aside such things.”

Kit and Rat were huddled in one of the back rows, shifting uncomfortably on the hard wooden benches but glad to be inside and out of the cold. It wasn’t _warm_ inside the two-storey brick building’s hall, but it wasn’t freezing like it was outside either; more a sort of mild coolness. Kit leaned against Rat’s shoulder and let the familiar cadence of the elderly woman’s voice wash over her, listening with half an ear. Sometimes the monks would quiz people on what had been said, and while they wouldn’t kick you out if you weren’t able to mumble something convincing, they’d get all fussy and annoying and insist on explaining it all again, which was a real pain.

“You think you took nothing away from these lectures, don’t you? But child, I remember how you distrusted the gifts of the Althing in those early days, thinking that anyone who would sate your wants could not have your better interests in mind. I have seen you shy away from those who have never even met an Immaculate; expecting them to hate and fear you for what you are. I listen to you when you speak of the Realm as a pillar of the world that cannot be challenged, and of other Chosen as fearful and terrible foes. You absorbed more of the Immaculate Faith than you know.”

Vaguely registering that the nun had segued into talking about the Anathema - a subject Kit could quite happily supply any questioners with a wealth of gory, blood-curdling stories about, both of things they did and things that should be done to them - she tilted her head a bit to blow on Rat’s ear.  He kept looking ahead with the well-practiced expression of attentive, pious eagerness that meant he was completely ignoring whatever he was looking at, and nudged her to show her she had his attention.

“You know that place that sells furs on Bolt Street?” she whispered. Rat nodded slightly, still looking up at the pulpit. She grinned. “I think I worked out how to crack it.”

That got him to turn his head a little towards her, raising an eyebrow. “How?” he breathed. “They lock it up tight at night, and there’s no way we could get out with anything during the day. Them northerners are huge, an’ we can’t outrun ‘em on Bolt or Cotton Way.”

“We don’t have to,” Kit whispered back, bouncing on her seat in excitement. “I figure, they gotta get the furs in somehow, right? So I went an’ sat out watching ‘em an’ asking around a bit, an’ they get restocked every other Airday by a big cart! It parks just out the back, round on the cobbled yard bit you get into by the pie place!”

They paused as a monk passed by along the aisle, and attentively pretended to listen to the head nun go on and on. “... but it can be done. For worth is not gained all in one go. There is no golden road to righteousness, and it is nothing more than hubris to think so” she lectured. “Do not be the grasshopper, who lazes around all summer and starves when winter comes. Be the bee, who works day after day, earnestly gathering the nectar of wisdom from flowers, and stores honey so that they might last through the winter. For death is the winter of the soul, and if we have not saved our own honey of rightful deeds during our lives, then the starvation that strikes us all down will be agony itself. 

“And those who put aside wisdom, life after life, become stronger and more wise and are favoured by the world, for good deeds are rewarded and wicked ones punished. There is a great mountain at the heart of the world, and we are all pilgrims on a path up it, climbing and climbing. Those nearly at the top become dragons, the mightiest of all living beings, and a mark that one has nearly left this vale of sorrows and attachment behind us.”

Rat considered. “So you’re thinkin’ distract ‘em and nab one of the furs while they ain’t looking?” he asked in a low undertone, paying no attention to the sermon. “Still pretty risky, if you ask me. Them furs is heavy. And them northerners don’t get distracted as easy as some.”

“Nah, nah,” Kit disagreed. “I’m thinkin’, right, we get a big distraction. A really big one. I’m thinkin’ this is a good time to pull out that mob-and-scatter plan. If we rope enough people in, we can empty out one of the crates and split it between everyone! An’ I can think of a dozen kids that’d go for it; the cold’s real bad this year!”

“So think of the Immaculate Dragons, those five kindly beings who show us all the five paths of the world. Think upon their lessons, and meditate. Hear their words and think upon the Texts,” interrupted the head nun, opening the great book in front of her. “Close your eyes, and we shall now read from Hesiesh’s teachings.”

Rat snorted. “Finally,” he whispered. “Let’s get this over with and eat. Then we can talk who we’re gonna bring in.”

Kit nodded, and closed her eyes and pressed her hands against her heart. Later she would pretend, as she always did, that she’d been thinking about the mob of screaming urchins she was planning to drive into a hit-and-run scuffle over a parked cart loaded with furs, or the lovely warm nights they’d have under heavy northern blankets, or the watery soup and slightly-stale bread they were about to be given, in helpings big enough to actually fill them up instead of just taking the edge off the hunger.

But those would be the lies of later. For the moment, she squeezed her eyes shut and _prayed_ with all her heart, begging the mighty Dragons not with eloquence or formal ritual or rich offerings, but only with what she had. A heart full of turbulent emotion and earnest hope and _longing_ for a connection to something greater than herself, which would love her and protect her and empower her and give her a sense of peace and purpose that she hadn’t felt at all in the two years since she escaped from Kasseni, and which she’d forgotten existed in the two years of slavery before that. She opened her heart to the Dragons and begged them, in her clumsy and misguided way, to hear her pleas and answer them.

But the Dragons never did.

For two more years she tried. She watched the monks and nuns who seemed to find such meaning and strength and purpose in their faith, and tried to emulate them. She listened to the Immaculate Texts they read out and did her best to memorise bits and pieces, muttering them to herself when she was sure she was alone - for she trusted nobody but Rat with her secrets, and even Rat, she feared, would mock or tease her for her earnest efforts in this.

When she could spare the time, she would pray, burning little scraps of food or burying them in the ground or under trees, throwing them in canals or leaving them on rooftops. She was young, and didn’t understand the difference between meditating on a being and praying to it. The temple’s staff was stretched thin in numbers, and while Kit might have overcome her wariness enough to trust and listen to them, none ever noticed her to give her personal attention and correct her misapprehensions and misunderstandings.

So the seasons went, Air through Earth to Fire and back again to Air.

Nothing ever answered her.

And slowly, Kit Firewander began to lose the fragile bud of faith. Rebellious questions rose up in her chest, and still there was nobody to answer them. Why _shouldn’t_ she want things, when her life was so hard without them? How come stealing was wrong? Was she meant to starve instead? What did the monks and nuns have that made them so _happy_ living lives almost as hard as hers - for they had no lavish quarters in the little temple; their cots were hard and their floors were cold and they ate the same soup and bread as she did when she attended. And yet...

Eleven years old and not much taller than she’d been at nine, Kit crouched in a tree that overlooked the temple, giving her a view over the wall around the property and into the vegetable gardens. The old wall was much older than the brick temple, but Kit was blind to the shape of the ancient building it marked out. Her sharp grey eyes narrowed in on one of the women; a Nexan initiate a few years older than her who was weeding the beds. She was smiling absently, looking perfectly content as she dug up scraggly shoots of green and laid them in a wicker basket. Every so often she’d hug her arms and shiver, or rub her hands together and blow on them, but she’d get back to work right after with no complaints.

Kit wanted to punch her. With a brick.

It wasn’t _fair!_ How come _her_ prayers had been answered? How come _she_ had that... that _feeling_ , that look of being happy with her lot ‘cause the Dragons loved her? Kit had seen her start here! She’d only been with the temple for three seasons! Kit had been coming for three _years_ ; she’d prayed tonnes and offered up food she could barely spare, she’d _tried!_ Sure, she hadn’t done everything the Texts said was good; she’d stolen things and wanted things... but she’d be dead if she hadn’t! And she’d said sorry afterwards and everything, and she’d tried to do it as little as she could, and... and _why?_

Why did _this_ girl get that happiness, and not Kit?

It wasn’t fair it wasn’t fair _it wasn’t fair!_

“No, child. It is not. And now you look at the worship of the Unquestionable with the same mistrust, and view Deveh and Sasimana’s devotion with the same bitterness. Perhaps I should be glad that you merely lack true faith in the Descending Hierarchy - that you even pay lip service to it at all. Then again... perhaps I should fear what you might do should the Priests ever push you too far.”

Tears in her eyes, teeth bared, Kit slipped down from the tree and ran, furious energy driving her limbs to a pounding beat as she darted through the streets and up onto the roofs and across the district. She forced her heartbreak and her anger and her betrayal out into the physical effort of movement and urban flight.

She came to a stumbling halt at the edge of the Parko Llana, ducked an idle swat from one of the mercenaries who guarded it, and disappeared into the trees. Finding a safe spot by a small pond, she looked around warily and dropped to her knees beside an ancient statue; defaced and weathered by uncountable years and half-buried over time. She glanced around cautiously. Nobody was nearby, and the statue would hide her from view the way she’d come. Now... she had a tree, a pond, she was out under the sky and kneeling on the soft soil. Fumbling in her beltpouch, she retrieved a precious box of stolen matches and counted them. Six left. She could spare one for this.

Picking out one of the sulphur-infused sticks, she cleared a space near the edge of the pond and built a little cone of twigs and sticks of deadwood with the match at the centre. Then she produced a knife and a flint, and struck them against each other until the sparks made the little pile catch.

Fire. That made five.

“Okay,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut. “Listen. We gotta talk.”

The little pyre crackled softly, burning through its paltry supply of twigs. It was sloppily built, and wouldn’t last long. It was barely even throwing off any heat, despite how close Kit sat to it.

“I done prayed a lot to you,” Kit said, eyes still shut, hands clasped over her chest. “I burnt you bits of food off my plate, an’ buried ‘em and gave ‘em to trees an’ canals an’ the sky and such. I been listening to all the stuff you wrote for years now, an’... an’ I might not always follow it exact, but I try my best! You seen I do! I always say sorry when I can’t, too, an’ I only steal when I need to. An’... an’ you made all your monks and nuns happy, an’ I been going to temple way longer than some of them. You _promised_ , in your big book the nuns read. You promised you’re there for all of us humans. You promised you were kind.”

The wind rustled the leaves above her and whistled over the worn statue at her back. The cold from the ground leached into her knees and ankles. The fire popped, and burnt lower.

“But I ain’t never seen anything back from you, even after all I gave. So... so I’m giving you one last chance. You owe me _something_. I ain’t even asking for food or a better place to sleep or that kinda thing. Just... just gimme a sign. Show me you’re listening. Show me you _care_.”

She paused. Trembled. Her shoulders shrank.

“That’s all I want,” she whispered. “Please. Show me you care.”

Holding her breath, heart in her mouth, one last ember of hope glowing in her chest; Kit cracked her eyes open.

The fire had gone out.

She stared at it for a long, long time. Then she rose to her feet.

“Fine,” she spat at the ash and charcoal. “ _Fine_. I don’t need you anyway. I don’t need anyone ‘cept Rat.”

Glaring up at the sky, Kit spat defiantly.

“You hear that?” she yelled. “I don’t need you! An’ I never will!”

* * *

** Debts To Pay **  
Seasons passed, and Kit and Rat got taller. Not much taller in Kit’s case, but it was still happening. They were doing well - well as a pair of kids on the streets might do. They were renting a room, well away from the strangest and worst Firewander streets. Their landlord was a sucker of an old lady who’d fence some of the smaller things they found and would sometimes even let them get away with not paying rent if they filched a nice ham for her - and she’d let them eat some of the stew she made with it. Things were going good.

Good things never lasted too long on the streets. There was no long term. Because, inevitably, then came the sicknesses of Nexus, and it kicked their feet out from under them.

* * *

Kit was twelve, and she was going to live to see thirteen.

That was a new feeling, after the last four weeks.

Here was the price of her survival though: they had nothing left. Her pickpocketing was half their income to start with, and Rat had been desperately tending to her even after he’d shaken off the sickness himself. If it had only been the scarlet fever, they might have been fine - but just when they thought she’d gotten over it, she’d crashed again. Her fever had spiked until she felt like she was on fire, and her heartbeat had been fluttering as fast and light as a bird’s. She’d been unable to stand, jerking and twitching on her bedroll as her joints swelled up and every breath sent pain shooting through her chest. What pitiful funds they’d managed to scrimp and save, the medicines had chewed through in days. Their landlady was dead. So was half the house. They were homeless again.

Rat hadn’t said it. But Kit knew he’d thought she was going to die. _Kit_ had thought she was going to die. She’d almost hoped she would, hoped he would stop forcing things down her throat to draw it out, stop telling her to “hold on, just hold on, you can beat this, Kit, I know you can”. So many times, she’d almost told him to let her go.

Almost.

But she never quite managed. And now she was going to live.

With nothing.

Actually, it was worse even than nothing. Nothing would be an _improvement_. Nothing would mean they were only broke, and that would be fixable with a few days at the market with other people’s beltpurses.

No, what they were was homeless, hungry and drowning deep in favours owed and borrowed coin.

So Rat did something. Something not like what he usually did - something barely-planned and dangerous. At least, that was what Kit assumed. He wouldn’t tell her exactly what he did to impress Mister Chen, but in later years Kit told herself it was super brave and risky and so he didn’t want her to worry. Or, she admitted, want her to one-up him. She just knew it involved Old Calley in some way, because all the kids on the street knew she was under Mister Chen’s protection.

Even before she was better, they were working for him. They started near the bottom - watching his rivals, running messages for him, telling him the news on the street. Kit quickly showed how talented she was as someone small and flexible for getting in through windows; Rat was likeable and smarter than most of the other kids working for him. 

It wasn’t until the job at the Red Leaf Street bakery that Kit first ran into Liho. All the other street kids were terrified of him. It wasn’t just because they were a wyld mutant and priest who smiled like they knew where you napped. It was partly that, yes, but the thing was… Liho was one of Mister Chen’s special people. He did the weird work, which meant if he was in on a job, things were going to get freaky. And they did. The Red Leaf Street bakery was holding onto something Mister Chen had been smuggling for a client, and then someone broke the seal and let something out. Liho had asked for a kid to get in through the window at the back. Kit had her reputation already, and Rat tagged along because he wasn’t going to leave her alone. 

If Kit or Rat had known what that night was going to involve, they would have probably risked Mister Chen’s anger and not shown up. But they didn’t, and so they arrived on time and set about their work.

By the time the sun was up, the bakery was on fire. Kit, shaking like a leaf and covered in scrapes and bruises obtained in her desperate flight from the _thing_ in the basement, was sitting out back with the shawl of the pretty lady with glowing blue hair wrapped around her shoulders. And Liho was looking over the broken pot that Rat had picked up because, as he explained in street argot and with reference to things they’d seen in Firewander, ‘it just looked important’.

“Sai’ we shoulda just burn’ the place down from th’star’,” said the hulking man with the too-long teeth and strange feet and rabbit ears.

“That, my dear man,” Liho said, turning the clay pot over and over in his hands, “is not what we were paid to do. And the fire is blocking all the exits. It’s still going to be in there.”

“So?”

“So I think Mister Chen would like to know there might still be a way to make the sale. And none of us want the Council turning an eye to the trade here.” Liho smiled, spreading his four arms in a simple gesture. “And thanks to these brave, sweet, innocent children, we have the seal those offal-brained idiots broke; good riddance to them.” Even in her state, Kit could hear the mocking tone and the casual contempt for the dead. Or maybe the worse-than-dead, from what she’d seen of them.

Blue-Hair Lady in her sweat-streaked pale make-up rested her hands on Kit’s shoulders. “Hmm. Old Cohzi?”

“I was thinking the Wehyna Brothers, but you’re right. Cohzi might be better at making a copy of this. Hmm. Mmm hmm.” Liho dusted down his hands. “Mister Chen will need to hire a specialist for the actual ritual, but that’s up to him.” 

They started to talk in more detail, but Kit couldn’t really follow them. Shivering, she looked at Rat. “Cor blimey,” he said softly. “That weren’t half horrid.”

“It was all horrid,” Kit said, shuddering convulsively again as the images came rushing back. The thing in the basement. The wet meat, the blue-green glow, the faces of what had once been the baker and his family. She roughly wiped her eyes against her sleeve. Crying made you look weak, and she couldn’t look weak. But right now the sun was coming up and she was alive and she couldn’t hold them back either.

“They were only ever things for you to fear. Had you ever seen a demon before me? And ghosts… you know ghosts. There is still something human about them, for all their madness. But chaos-beasts were only ever something that bought terror.”

Soft arms wrapped themselves around her shoulders. “It’s all right,” the woman said, holding her. Like no one had held her since… since a long time. “It’s okay to cry. I’d be crying if I’d come out all raw from down there. And you did a good job, setting the place on fire like that.”

“Y’... y’ always carry oil and flint when lookin’ through ol’ places,” Kit burbled. “If y’ got coin for it or y’can filch some. It scares off beasties an’ ghasties an’ dead men what don’t know to lie down.”

The woman beamed at her, and Kit took a deep, snotty breath. “Liho,” she called out. “I’m gonna to take these kids off to a stall, get them summin’ to eat.”

Liho rolled his eyes. “Look at you, always fussing over some brats,” he drawled.

“Don’t mind ‘em,” the woman said, one arm around Kit’s thin shoulders and one around Rat’s as she led them down the street. “Liho’s like that. And I reckon you two are smart kids. Smart enough you’re wasted as Mister Chen’s runners and snakekids.”

“You lookin’ to hire us?” Rat said immediately. “‘Cause we still… we still owe Mister Chen and we ain’t welching him.”

“Hire… yes, maybe. Maybe at first. But I think you got brains, you got wits - and for this line of work, you got enough luck that maybe Venus’s telling me that I oughta give you some peace of mind for my own karma.” 

She beamed at them, and Kit couldn’t help but smile back. 

“At the least, maybe I could use some kids for the priestessin’. Kids are good at collecting coins. We’ll see if you got what it takes to get trained up yourself. I’ll show Calley I can handle my own students an’ she can’t just treat me as her pupil all my life, see that I don’t!”

* * *

** Lost Things **  
So it went. Street rats became students, and Kit and Rat began to learn - not from the school of hard knocks, but from tutors. Bel taught her how to fight, and honed her knack for fighting _mean_ and _dirty_. Liho coached her on how to lie, deceive and cut herself into pieces; showing only what bits she chose. Gull inducted her into occult tricks and cantrips, and showed her the art of pickpocketing - not the crude quick grab-and-dashing she’d relied on as a kid, but the subtle ways of stealing rings off people’s fingers without them even noticing.

Rat spent more time with Liho than she did. Liho, and also Calley; the old alchemist who’d taught Gull all she knew, and knew more than her besides. She gave Kit some lessons too, but mostly Kit was Gull and Bel’s student while Rat was Calley and Liho’s; the inseparable duo diverging in their interests and native talents.

For three years they were making it under Chen’s heavy hand and their teachers’ guidance. Things got tough at times, but they were always learning, improving, growing. Those were the good days, the happy times, the age of wonders. And the age of more, too, for as Air turned to Water in Kit’s fifteenth year, she and Rat moved past friendship into the fumbling, hesitant steps of something more. They didn’t lack knowledge of what they were doing - nobody who’d spent time around Gull and Liho lacked knowledge of that sort of thing - but while the idea of sex was nothing new to them, the idea of romance was. And whatever they had with each other was something quite distinct from the usual transactions of streetwalker and client, harlot and mark, whore and buyer.

It wasn’t nameless or faceless or meaningless. It was Kit and it was Rat, and it was special, and it was precious. So they took it slowly. They hugged and giggled under thin sheets with their clothes still on, pushed each other off the cushioned seats they shared before pulling each other back to embrace, kissed - first clumsily and then with growing ease and grace - on rooftops and in alleyways. Kit; skinny, short, looking like no one else in Nexus. Rat; not quite sure whether he was sometimes a girl, lanky and red-blond.

And then, almost before it had time to bloom, it was over.

The day Rat disappeared wasn’t special. It wasn’t important, or notable, or marked by some great event. It was just another day in Earth. He was out on errands for Chen, talking to different informants around the city and bringing back information for Chen to collate, dispensing a few veiled threats here and a few promising offers there. Kit knew he was checking on his own contacts too; the rumour network he was slowly starting to build who spoke to him for his own sake, not just as the ears of his boss - an immature mimicry of the lists of friends and informants people like Liho and Calley had all over the city.

She wasn’t expecting him back until late, and so she didn’t worry when the sun went down without him coming back to their little apartment. When the moon rose high over the cold night clouds, she just assumed he’d bunked down somewhere else for the night on the tail of a juicy lead, and when sunrise came she was already off on her errands for Gull, and then trailing Bel around with an air of eager violence hanging around her.

When she stopped in at their flat at lunchtime and found no note or sign of him having returned - nor even a message from a runner - that was when Kit started to grow concerned. But by then, it was far too late.

“Except, of course, you felt guilty about not worrying for too long, didn’t you, child? He’d become more secretive under Liho’s guidance. He did things without telling you, unlike when you were young. You thought he was acquiring a secret gift for you, as he sometimes did, and so you didn’t think to be concerned.”

Had that been it? Yes... yes, it must have been. And that guilt drove her to maddened extremes in looking for him. She scoured the city, in the days and weeks after. She combed every district, looked down every street, even - with a sick and fearful anticipation - dredged every canal. She got thrown out of drinking halls in Nighthammer, had screaming matches with merchants in Nexus Proper, begged and wheedled the guards in Sentinel’s Hill into checking their records. She tore through the gangs of Firewander like a wild and feral thing, begged on the street corners of Cinnabar and got chased out of Bastion by thugs who didn’t like the look of her.

She didn’t sleep except when she couldn’t walk from exhaustion. She didn’t eat except when her hunger pangs made her vision swim. She ignored sprains and cuts and bruises from the heavy fists of Council mercenaries or the knives of other street rats. She was fifteen years old and a slender, scrawny thing, but she was vicious beyond reason with no seeming care for pain, and burnt with a fire and drive that made men ten years her senior and half her weight again step back in wary caution when her frustration bubbled over and exploded into rants and screams and yells.

And eventually, about three weeks after Rat went out one day with a casual “seeya” and never came back, it came to a head in the days after Kit stumbled back, black and blue, arm broken.

The fight with Gull was legendary.

In its wake, Kit found her way to Calley’s, broke in through a first floor window using rosemary and rust on the lock, punched the chattering alarm ward by the stairs hard enough to dent the wall, and climbed up into the rafters to hug her knees and cry. The old woman found her there when she came back from an apothecary visit, red-eyed and raw and sullenly silent. From the way she peered up at Kit, shook her head and then went over to her tables, she’d already heard what the fight was about.

To be fair, so had half of Tanner Lane.

Calley was clearly waiting for Kit to say something, because she busied herself with jotting down notes in her little book. Kit had heard the street kids say that Calley’s little book was where she kept her spells. For all she knew, it was right. From the times she’d peeked over the old woman’s shoulder, there were an awful lot of numbers in it, though. So… yeah. Magic, even if it might’ve been proper priest magic or countinghouse magic, rather than the kind of joyful priestess tricks she knew.

“Well?” the old lady said eventually. “Gull cut yer tongue out?”

Kit sniffed a few times, shuffling painfully across the rafters to sit closer to her teacher’s teacher and setting the bundles of herbs that hung from hooks and strings affixed to the broad wooden beams to swinging as her passage disturbed them.

“She din’t have no right sayin’ what she did,” she muttered eventually, toying aggressively with a clump of some kind of stalky grass stuff bound up in twine, pulling bits out one at a time. “Weren’t right. I should’ve smacked her an’ all, ‘stead of just running off.”

From Calley’s harumph, she wasn’t impressed. “Well, get yer arse down here, or I’m gonna start charging you rent. If yer gonna be here, yer gonna get those hands busy and you can start by making sure the lemongrass is bundled up right. I don’t trust the boy to not get sloppy, and it’s good money down the drain if it gets stale or if he’s puttin’ too much in a bundle.”

There was a rebellious pause, which Calley treated the same way she treated them from Gull and Rat; ignoring the sulky pride entirely and projecting the brusque, businesslike certainty that Kit would do as she was told.

After a moment of internal struggle, a soft thud announced her dropping to the floor. There were bags under her eyes and scabs littering her knuckles and arms. Her left arm was bound up in a splint, she was favouring her ribs, and there was a limp to her left leg she couldn’t quite disguise. Her clothes were tattered and stained, both with blood - not all of it hers - and canal scum and grease and tar. The wound-up tension that had been driving her for days hadn’t dissipated; just settled into her bones, and it made her move in jerky motions like an insect or a puppet driven by torsion ropes.

Stiffly and roughly, she yanked the bundle of herbs she’d been messing with down and started spreading it out on a table and retying it. Calley kept jotting down notes in her little book, and waited.

“... he ain’t gone,” Kit muttered eventually, head down and shoulders bunched. “He _ain’t_.”

“He ain’t here from what I can see, girl,” Calley pointed out. “And you ain’t been chasing nothin’ around and causin’ trouble over it for the last few days.”

Kit’s head came up as her temper flared. “You know what I mean!” she snapped.

“Then say it. I ain’t here to listen to you talk in circles around what yer thinkin’.”

_ “He isn’t dead!” _

Calley simply shrugged, her streaks of white hair visible in the gloom of her rooms. She was too cheap to pay for more candles or lamp oil than she had to, but it was gloomy outside. “Could be. Could be not. People die easy in this city. And you nor him don’t live a safe life.” She glared at Kit. “I had to patch you up more than a few times, and yer arm’s still broke. So stop lyin’ to yourself, gal. Yeah, Rat might be dead. Might well be dead. But from what I’m hearing, you ain’t trying very hard to not follow him.”

Kit bristled. “I ain’t got a death wish! I’m tryin’ to find him! I’m the _only_ one tryin’!” Her voice cracked in outrage, and she slammed her right hand down on the table, scattering bits of lemongrass off onto the floor. “Seems like I’m the only one who even cares! Bel don’t give a fuck, an’ Liho sai-”

She broke off, jerking her head violently away and flinching from the pain the movement sent through her arm. Calley could hear her tightly controlled breathing; forcibly slow so as not to allow any sobs out.

“... an’ Gull ain’t any better,” she spat after she’d got control over herself. “Gettin’ on my back about... about shit she got no right sayin’. An’ she obviously thinks the same as Liho an’ just don’t got the stones to say it.” 

Calley sighed. “Put the lemongrass back,” she said, “and mind none of it gets into those thievin’ pockets of yours. You look like you need some tea.”

Even years later, Kit would remember Calley’s tea - always so weak, from leaves that had been used time and time again by the tight-fisted woman, always slightly medicinal-tasting from the other herbs she kept close to her teapot. But it was hot and Calley surprised her by adding a shot of the spirits her daughter brewed to it. 

“I never thought Gull were fit to train you,” she said, gnarled old fingers wrapped around her chipped cups. “Girl’s flighty. Always has been. Got faeries on the brain. And in the blood. Everyone says her grandma were one. So I’ll hear your side from you, and if you lie to me, I’ll curse you so hard that you won’t be able to light a fire without the flint turnin’ on you.”

Kit shivered. The Immaculates’ preaching about sin and reincarnations and whatnot was all a pile of crap. But a flint-and-tinder curse; that was a threat she believed in.

“She... I got caught by some guards,” she spilled. “My arm, you saw. An’ they gave me a beatin’. She’d been on my back an’ all about slowin’ down an’ givin’ up on Rat and shit about ‘grief’ an’ ‘accepting it’ and stuff. An’ then after the beating I was laid up an’ my monthlies came an’ she _freaked_ an’ started yellin’ at me ‘bout how I’d... about...”

Baring her teeth, she screwed her eyes shut, her shoulders rising again as her battered ribs went wire-tense and her good fist clenched. As if by winding every muscle in her body as tight as it could go, she could force the tears down and lock them away. Her breath was laboured, uneven and choppy as she fought for control.

_“She said it was my fault,”_ she forced out, her voice high and warbling on the edge of being a wail, with just enough control to stay level. She was trembling all over, clenching her teeth until they hurt. _“She said it was my fault even though she never fuckin’ told me.”_

When she had her voice level again and looked up, it was part plea and part guilt packaged up with a savage light that was looking for an excuse to hurt something. “She was lying, right? Calley? Tell me she was lying! I weren’t pregnant and I didn’t lose my baby!”

“Oh.” Soft. Sad. “And your souls are your children now. You’re so… insistent that they are that you even gave me one. No wonder you fell into this madness after what happened to Haneyl.”

Calley was quiet, letting Kit’s fury take form. Then, “It don’t matter,” she said, eventually. “Yer all skin and bones. And barely know from week to week where yer next meal’s coming from. Yer too skinny to be regular with yer monthlies, neither.” One of her hand-like feet fidgeted with the hem of her rough outer clothing. “If you was with babe, you ain’t got the fat or the health to carry ‘em well. So it don’t matter whether you was or wasn’t, ‘cause ‘specially with Rat gone, you can’t feed two.”

She raised one finger, holding back a Kit explosion. “You ain’t trained up yet, but yer still a devotee of Venus Peace-Giver. The dead ain’t under her wing. That’s her sister’s care, and when Pale Saturn chooses to rest ‘er hand on a man or a babe, that’s it. What youze training for is to bring peace for the livin’ and help ‘em out with the passions of the gods. And it don’t matter if Rat were dead or not, ‘cause he ain’t here - and if you were with babe, then Saturn’d be looking for you. Mothers too young, she takes ‘em and their babes. So you better stop your silly death-seeking, ‘cause Saturn don’t like those who try to find loved ones in her realm before their time. ‘Specially not a priestess tryin’ to get out of her duties to her more kindly sister. She don’t like that at all.”

Kit hissed under her breath. Calley had always paid more respect to the Maidens than she had. She followed Venus, albeit grudgingly, but her reaction to finding out that her hometown’s violent destruction and her trip north to Nexus in a slave-barge had been woven by three of the Blue Lady’s sisters had been... turbulent.

“I could’a...” she protested. “If... if he’d known too, or if I’d found him, we could’a... if _I’d_ known...” She shook her head, face twisting up again. “It _did_ matter! Even... even if he’s gone, I could’a had somethin’ left of him that... that...”

Her breath came in uneven gulps, her good arm flexing and her left flexing and flinching with every stab of pain. For a long moment she curled around herself over the bench, blind to everything around her as she wrestled with herself.

Calley laid a wrinkled hand on her shoulder, and that was enough to break the stalemate. Turning into the woman’s side, Kit’s furious mask of toughness dissolved, and the tears poured out.  Calley guided her over to the fire and sank into a chair with Kit half-sprawled on her lap, face pressed into the old woman’s stomach as tears built into sobs and sobs rose into wails that wracked her scrawny, bony frame as if to shake it apart.

“So that’s why you hated Rat. At least one of the reasons. You blamed him for not being there. And, mmm, more than that, you blamed him for the guilt you felt. Not just because you were angry because he wasn’t there. But also because Calley’s words made you blame yourself.” A sigh. “You named Calesco for her, didn’t you? And it shows. She even perches in the same way.”

She did, Kit thought. She _did_ blame Rat. Because... because if he hadn’t _left her_ , she wouldn’t have lost the baby. If there had been one. She wouldn’t have torn up the city looking for him, she wouldn’t have gotten into those fights, she wouldn’t have bled so much from her monthlies - at the wrong time of month, too, even irregular as they were. She wouldn’t have had that vicious fight with Gull, where the pretty older woman had been crying from how Kit had screamed at her and from what she’d done, had looked at her with heartbreak and disappointment and pain.

If Rat hadn’t _abandoned her_ , she wouldn’t have been left alone again.

Calley was thinking of other things. “What useless ejut did you get to bind that arm?” she demanded. “It’s gonna heal all wrong. You’re going to owe me for this, Kit, but I’m gonna have to re-splint that. And I might as well check you over, make sure you’re not bleeding inside or nothing. Since I’m wanting paying, I’m not letting you drop dead on me or wind up a cripple.”

Kit grumbled and muttered and sulked and swore. But it was care and affection of sorts, even if it was coarse and impatient, and she had less of that now than she’d had before.

So, as she always did on such occasions, she gave in and let Calley have her way. It was easier than arguing - and even if it hurt, it was all for her own good.

* * *

** No Love Without Pain **  
Things were different with Rat gone. It wasn’t Kit-and-Rat as a team.  It was just her, the street rat and half-trained priestess, with a gaping hole in her. She’d known him for half her life and he was… gone.

This is the truth: the first time she slept with Liho and Gull, it wasn't a romantic event watching the fireworks. They'd got off a job and had cash to burn. Liho had been drinking and both of them smoking loveweed. Kit knew what they did when they were just off a job.

She missed Rat. He was an ache in her heart. And she was lonely. 

She wasn’t proud of it afterwards, that she watched them and nearly begged to join them when they saw her. But at least she wasn't alone. And while Liho looked at her with what she thought was faint contempt the next day, they hadn’t said no. While Gull... Gull understood not wanting to be alone. She was soft when Kit needed softness. And their relationship changed. She taught Kit many more of the arts of the joyful priestess she’d held back. They studied them together.

It wasn’t something Kit planned, but her presence pushed Gull and Liho apart.

“Was there a part of you that wanted to push Sasimana and Testolagh apart too? Maybe not. But the thought must still have been at the back of your mind, pushed down so deep that even I couldn’t hear it.”

* * *

** Wet Work **  
Mister Chen was a bad man. Kit had known it before she worked for him. You didn’t have power in Nexus by being good. It was something you knew in your guts. When there was a new Civility about eating fish on Mercurydays, you knew for a fact that someone on the Council was benefiting from it. 

But Mister Chen wasn’t like those fancy nobs up in Bastion. He’d clawed his way up from the street, they said. He’d started as a fence and done well enough that soon enough he wasn’t just passing on stolen goods, but was also ordering them stolen. And he was smart. Smart enough that his money went back into legitimate businesses, or as close as things were back in Nexus. He owned entire streets of slum housing, and the shops which operated out of the ground floor paid him rent and protection money. His boys were the law there, far more than the distant hand of the Council of Entities. He didn’t charge taxes, no, because that was against the Dogma - but everyone knew what his ‘insurance’ was. The chubby, sallow-skinned king of a few streets of Firewander.

Kit knew much more about some of the seedier things he did, because that was one of the reasons he paid mendicant priests like Gull and Liho their retainers. They made sure that when he bumped off rivals or dug up parts of the ancient sewers for his loot stores, he didn’t make enemies on the other side. But, well…

… people like Liho and Bel also sent people off to the lands of the Dead all by themselves.

The Yingsha job, when she was sixteen. That was where everything changed. The woman was one of Chen’s more frequent rivals in the city; some face-painted and hair-coiffed bint from the Blessed Isles who came to Nexus seeking her fortune or running from shame or whatever. Liho was out of town for the job, and so it was Calley and Kit who got called into Chen’s office and who helped him work out the plan.

It was beautiful in its brutal simplicity. Chen had found out where Yingsha was keeping the shipment of occult materials for the Midnight Queen of the Council. Calley was knowledgeable enough to fence it without throwing up too many flags about where the stuff had gone. And Kit was agile and athletic enough to get in there through an upper window and unlock the doors for his boys to get in - in force. Chen said Yingsha would run, and she did; fled out through the back while the fighting tilted further and further towards Chen’s side; the warehouse guards taken off-guard and unsuspecting. The dumb old Realm bitch didn’t even look back as she ran, right past where Kit was waiting all quiet and still by the back passage that led to the only other way out.

And that’s where she did it.

That’s where Kit murdered her.

It was her first time. Oh, she’d killed before. But never like this. Never as a job, for pay, on an important target. There was a big difference between stabbing someone in a fury mid-fight, only finding out later that they bled out or the wound got infected, and climbing in through a window _knowing_ that she was going to stab a woman in the back as she ran. There was a big difference between desperately tripping someone before they could jump on Bel’s back with a cleaver then watching him turn around to bring one of those huge iron-shod sandals crashing down on their head, and coldly waiting for a fleeing face caked with too-thick makeup to turn away before lunging out of the shadows with a dagger.

There was a big difference between a kill, and an assassination.

Things changed after that. Chen started having more jobs for her. Specifically for her. A few months later a big ship from Great Forks showed up in town - a giant six-paddle-wheeler with damn near a district on board. Some of the men there started making trouble for Chen’s girls. Two turned up dead.

So he paid for Kit to get a new blue dress and clean herself up and hang out with the girls. Just in case there was trouble.

“If someone’s doing that shit,” he told Kit from behind his groaning desk, stubbing out his cigar, “feminise the fuck. And then get some of my boys to bring him to me if he’s still alive. Take Bel as your backup.”

Kit giggled as she thought about it on the way there. _She_ was in charge of this job! Bel was _her_ backup! And Chen trusted her now - not as much as he trusted Liho yet, but way more than he used to!

“I wonder, is _this_ how you see the Unquestionable? Not as figures to worship, but as a parallel to this... this citizen-slumlord? He was powerful and frightening and had plans you didn’t understand, of which you were one small part. He paid you in things that seemed lavish gifts and ruled a territory that was vast to your young mind, and he had you work for him as a thief and an assassin. And he had other servants, too, who you learned from and worked with. Do you see your Bel in Peer Naan? That Liho person in Peer Orange Blossom or Deveh? I know you draw lines from Gull to Sasimana.”

The faint strains of music. A troubled, unhappy melody.

“Little wonder that you view it as coin-hire, if this is all the context you have for the Reclamation’s work.”

Kit grinned and bounced along to a jaunty little beat as she prepared. She was getting paid for this, and paid handsomely. It wasn’t like she’d ever say no to some good old-fashioned street justice, either. She hummed happily as she sharpened all of her knives in turn, stowing each one away about her person in neat little hiding places that made it look to the casual eye as if she was unarmed. When they were all tucked away properly, she could almost - to someone without the little prickle at the back of the neck or the survival instinct of the streets - pass for harmless.

The scantily-clad girls with their blue-painted lips shifted uneasily around the sharp-fanged cuckoo among their number, and shied away as much as they could without making it obvious what they were doing.

Kit didn’t notice. She was too busy digging some coca leaf out of the little pouch on her hip, popping it into her mouth and chewing happily. The rush hit her a moment later - nothing overwhelming, just a jolt of alertness, a bit more wakeful energy and eagerness for a tussle. She bounced on her toes a few times, wrinkling her nose at the fact that the motion didn’t make anything else bounce. Some of the other girls were curvy and soft, but not Kit. She was still a skinny, bony thing, even at sixteen.

Bel slouched over and leant on the wall, one elbow above her head propping him up as his massive body boxed. He grinned down at her, and Kit glared up at him fearlessly.

“Lookin’ forwar’ to a goo’ nigh’?” he asked, those big rabbit-teeth slurring his words a little.

She bared her teeth in a savage return grin. “It’s gonna be fun, yeah,” she crooned. “But you! You gotta stay outta the way, Bel! They ain’t gonna come lookin’ to bruise up some girls if your gigantic ass is hangin’ around. Go lurk in an alley somewhere and stay outta my way ‘till you hear me yell.”

Bel rolled his shoulders. “You en’ gonna actually do anyone?” he rumbled.

Kit rolled her eyes. “It’s a job, see,” she said, waving her hand up and down. “This, I mean. I just gotta dress this way and that’s all I need.” She giggled. “I don’t think any of the people on this street could afford me for real,” she said cockily.

“Well, jus’ don’ go taking any stupi’ risks,” he said over his shoulder, loping off. “You en’ Gull. You don’ nee’ to do everythin’ she does.”

It was a long, cold night, and under other circumstances it might have left Kit with a profound respect for the other girls, and how much effort it must have taken them every night to look pretty and lusty and alluring when what they actually felt was cold and tired and feet-hurty and annoyed at all the men who ogled but didn’t actually pay anything.

But try as she might to make friends, none of them seemed to want to have anything to do with her. They were all too stuck up or something, edging away from her when she tried to strike up a friendly conversation.

“Whaddya think they’re gonna scream like when I stab ‘em first?” she might start, or “you think I should take their balls off ‘fore I drag ‘em to Chen, or after?” But they wouldn’t grin or answer. They’d just look at her like she’d said something wrong, or offensive, and make a hasty excuse to go stand with a different group.

It was disrespectful, was what it was! She was here to protect them! She was here to get some vengeance on the bastards who’d killed two of their own! And yet all of them just turned up their noses and silently told her to fuck off and not get anywhere near them!

She got the guys, in the end, though it was a bitch picking out the right ones. There were three of them it turned out, with a bit too much of an appetite for seeing a girl whimpering and a marked disinclination for paying. Kit had one down and screaming from a thigh wound and another cursing and stumbling and trying to get salty beer out of his stinging eyes before Bel charged around the corner in response to her yells and hit the third like a runaway cart. But the harlots still didn’t look grateful, or even happy, even when all three were groaning and trussed up and hauled onto a cart. They even shied away from her when she went over to reassure them that they’d never see the fuckers again, and that Chen’d make ‘em _hurt_ for what they’d done.

Grumbling sulkily on the ride back to Chen’s place, Kit voiced her hurt feelings to Bel at length.

“... an’ what makes ‘em so much better’n me, huh? I’m the priestess here! I got trained by Gull and Liho! I’d be better at their jobs’n they are, if I wanted to!”

Bel listened patiently; well-used to being subjected to the feral girl’s rants and aired grievances. Occasionally he’d grunt to show he was paying attention, though for the most part he just leaned back against the side of the cart and stared up at the dark sky.

“What’d they even have against me?” Kit eventually finished, stomping on one of the unfortunate sailors’ ankles and drawing a muffled scream as she ground it against the unsanded wood. Bel waited a few seconds to make sure she was finished, and let out a low rumble.

“Reckon i’ was th’stuff abou’ killin’ an’ fightin’,” he remarked, still looking up at the sky. “Li’l harlo’s like tha’, they prob’bly ain’ use’ to tha’ sor’ of thing. Yer an alley ca’, an’ they’re housepe’s.”

Kit’s face screwed up as she considered this. “But I was _protecting_ them!” she whined.

He shrugged. “Doesn’ mean anythin’ to ‘em, poin’ like tha’,” he said simply. “They’re sof’. Sof’ people look down on thugs’n’killers. Think we en’ as good as ‘em. Ge’ scare’ of us, an’ make their fear in’a sneerin’ so they feel better abou’ i’.”

The prospect of people looking down on her got the expected ferocious scowl from Kit, and she worried at his words like a stray dog at a rat. “So, ‘cause they ain’t fighters, they look down on people who’re tougher ‘cause they feel better about being snobby than being scared?” she asked after a while. “That seems pretty stupid to me, Bel.”

She wasn’t arguing with him. Experience had taught her that while Bel didn’t come out with insights very often and tended towards being slow-witted, he was usually right about what little he did say. Kit kind of suspected he could’ve been a lot smarter than he was, but drink and drugs and repeated head injuries had done for most of whatever brains he was born with. Now there was just a lingering bit of clever left hunkered in a corner that’d swathed itself in chainmail and padding to survive all the punches to the head Bel had been hit by, which left it unable to move at more than a slow waddle when it wanted to say something. Most people didn't realise the clever was there at all, especially given that his too-long teeth made it hard for him to talk properly.

He shrugged simply. “En’ jus’ tha’. They think fightin’s work for lowlifes an’ tha’ they’re better’n tha’, too. They don’ wanna think abou’ hurtin’ people, so they say i’s all dirty work an’ pu’ i’ ou’ of their minds.”

“What, because of pride?” Kit’s nose wrinkled.

“I dunno abou’ pri’.” Bel paused, giving a solid kick to the gut of one of the sailors who was wriggling too much. The man curled up into a ball, retching. “Bu’ way I see i’, mos; impor’an’ thing in life is makin’ sure you see nex’ week. Not just ‘morrow, see? It’s all abou’ tha’. Like, these shi’s - they en’ thinkin’. They wanna get laid but don’ wanna pay? Bu’ a’cos of tha’,” he grinned, showing off his long teeth, “Mis’er Chen’s prob’bly gonna sell ‘em to someone who wants you-nucks.”

Kit giggled at the thought. “Yeah, but what’s that got to do with me or them?”

Bel scratched his ears. “I’m jus’ sayin’, Gull en’ the be-all and end all-of how to make it in this life. And she thinks abou’ ‘morrorow over nex’ week, y’ken? Few years from now, she’ll be ol’, no’ as goo’-lookin’. She don’t put cash away. Bu’ me?”

He flexed one meaty fist, muscles bulging around his forearms and biceps like fattened snakes, and aimed another lazy kick at the third sailor’s shoulder, rolling him over with a moan.

“I’ll always be tough,” he grunted. “Liho’n’Gull wave tha’ learnin’ aroun’, bu’ all i’ really means is they’re sellin’ their bodies’n’gettin’ noticed by spiri’s. Brains make you stan’ ou’. Yer a stree’ ra’, you know wha’ happens to gang bosses.”

Kit nodded reluctantly. That had been a lesson she’d learned early, watching scuffles between the Firewander gangs. Being at the top was a position of power... but it also made you a target. A big target. She’d stayed away from the gangs at first out of resentment, but once she’d counted how many bosses had been in charge of the Wharf Rats just over the year she and Rat had spent down near the Lawless Front, and what had happened to the old ones...

... well. That and the turnover of even normal members had put her right off joining at all.

Bel grunted, seeing that his point had been made. “Bu’ me?” he said, gesturing to himself. “Wherever y’go, people are gonna need thugs, see. Tha’ ain’ never gonna go ou’ of style.”

_“You_ will, though,” Kit couldn’t help but point out. “You’ll get all old an’ wrinkled an’ slow an’ weak, an’ then you’ll be right fucked. Ain’t no use for a thug who can’t fight.” 

Bel snorted and lazily cuffed at her head; a blow that Kit nimbly ducked with a grin. “Yeah?” he asked, tilting his head her way. “So you feel goo’ abou’ goin’ up agains’ Re’ Lugo, then?”

There was a pause.

“... he doesn’t count,” Kit defended. “He’s _psycho_ , even if he’s all grey-haired and wrinkly. He snorts _firedust_ , I heard. An’ has a whole collection of ears he bit off people. I heard some of ‘em still have earrings an’ stuff on, what he bit off Bags.”

“S’my poin’, though, inni’? Ol’ age an’ cheatin’re still enough for an ol’ thug to get by.” Bel grinned lazily, patting her on the head with a hand big enough for his fingers to stretch from temple to temple. “So jus’ ‘member tha’ while yer choosin’ wha’ you wanna do, yeah? Bein’ clever’n’cunnin plans are all swank an’ flash, but cunnin’ plans go wrong an’ bein’ clever ge’s people killed. Stupi’ works, s’long as i’ can figh’ an’ en’ afrai’ to figh’ dir’y. Keep tha’ in mind, li’l Ki’, an’ yer never gonna fin’ yerself ou’ in the col’.”

The cart rattled its way through the streets, as one of the Council’s agents shouted out a new Civility from atop a building. It was about selling fish, though, so neither Kit nor Bel paid any attention to it as they carried on, taking their cargo of groaning victims to their ugly fates.

* * *

** Pay Your Dues **  
Mister Chen was a bad man. Not just as a gang lord, fence, pimp, and all the other things he did to hold his power in Nexus’s worst district. Kit saw it in other ways. Especially after she killed Yingsha for him.

His little kitten, he’d call her, and smile at her, chins creasing up into a smile. He’d praise her. Tell her she did good. Give her little presents. Pick out the choice goods for her, because word like Kit of Firewander got around, and it was good for his story. Good for his rep. Men expected his thugs to be big strong men like Bel. But to know that he had a teenage girl - a “psycho bitch” they whispered behind her back - who’d kill on command… that wasn’t right. ‘Specially when she was a priestess in blue.

Didn’t matter if she was only half-trained. It's the story, he told her with a wink. It’s all your reputation. The name, the character - in the streets, that was everything.

He bought her coca tea, and she liked that - it got her buzzing. Kept her sharp on cold mornings. He’d buy other things for his ‘special people’, like Gull’s dreamdust - but Kit’d tried that once and been trapped in a waking nightmare for what felt like days. No thanks! She liked her coca tea, though. And other presents, like nice clothes when he wanted her to be pretty and ribbons and her very, very pretty knives.

He wasn’t Rat. But he told her he needed her, that she was useful, that she was one of his best girls. She needed someone who’d say things like that. And there was definitely part of her that revelled in the hateful looks she got from his harlots. They were jealous of her! Her!

Of course, there was always a price. Always was, in Nexus.

She never let him take her. Not in the way that might make a child. But everything else was something she offered to keep him happy, to keep him smiling at her, to keep on paying for her coca tea and giving her choice jobs. It wasn’t love, but… what else did she have?

Kit didn’t even know why he wanted those things from her. He had prettier, curvier women working for him. Maybe it was the very fact she was all skin and bones and looked like a boy. Maybe it was the contained danger. The idea that his scary murder-priestess would offer herself to him. He got off on it. And Kit tolerated it.

For a while.

Because Mister Chen was a bad man, with a short temper. And when people told him things he didn’t want to hear, or betrayed him, or couldn’t be found when he needed them because they were in a dreamdust den… well, a much less nice side made itself known.

* * *

Kit was seventeen when she started to notice it. Well, it wasn’t exactly hard, was it? She was seeing a lot more of Gull than most people. She was drinking more. A lot more than she used to. When Kit had been a kid, Gull had made a thing about how dreamdust was a ritual tool for seeing the spirits and divining the future, but now Gull used it for… for other purposes. And now she had bruises sometimes, shading from purple to green to yellowish-brown.She shied away from shouts or angry men on the street. She flinched occasionally, when Kit raised her arm too fast or stood over her when she was sitting down.

A picture began to form, in all the ugly colours of congealing blood beneath the skin.

The bruises were never on her face. Well, they wouldn’t be, would they? There was a Civility about that. One of the ones Gull made sure Kit knew by heart, because it kept them safer. Striking a harlot and damaging her face got you fined just like breaking a workman’s tools.

And that meant that whoever was doing it knew the rules as well as they did. And didn’t want to pay a fine.

For four days solid in the week after Calibration, Gull gained a silent, seething shadow who watched from the edges of crowds and loitered outside buildings. Sharp grey eyes assessed her constantly, looking for any hint of new aches or pains, and thin fingers never strayed far from their knife-hilts. Each client Gull took, each person on the street that she spoke to, felt prickles running down their back.

But when she went into the dreamden, she only came out the next day when one of Mister Chen’s thugs went and retrieved her. And she wasn’t happy then, but she was much less happy when she left his office with a brand new limp.

Kit wasn’t sure what to do, at first. Stabbing sailors or terrifying drunk labourers was easy. When the threat came from her _boss_... that was confusing. But letting it go wasn’t an option, so in lieu of any obvious way to fix things, she went to her usual source of advice.

Which was Gull.

“What’s wrong?” she demanded of her teacher and lover, after cornering her in the bedroom she shared more and more often these days. “You got bruises on you more and more these past few months, and I reckon it’s Chen giving you ‘em. Why’s he doing that, Gull? How d’we stop him?”

Gull blanched and turned away, pretending not to hear the question. Kit frowned.

“Gull,” she said, crawling across the bed to kneel behind her. “C’mon. Talk to me. You got bruises all over you.” She didn’t, but it wasn’t a huge exaggeration. “You’re hurting. I wanna help, Gull.”

“‘M fine,” Gull snarled at Kit, stinking of spirits.

“You’re not fine,” Kit said, softly. “You’re drunk.”

“Just a little pick… pick-me up,” Gull insisted. She huddled in on herself, wrapping her arms around her body like a beaten child. Like Kit remembered doing when she was at _that place_.

Kit did what she’d wished someone had done for her, and wrapped her arms around Gull. “Come on,” she cooed into her ear. “Gull. It’s me. Just me. I’m not going to tattle on you to Chen,” ah yes, there was the flinch, “or Liho or Bel. You’re not feeling great, are you? It ain’t just the bruises.” She paused, thinking of being woken in the night. “It’s the nightmares, isn’t it?”

Gull, older, drink-sodden, buried her head in Kit’s bony shoulder with a sob. She mumbled something incoherent that couldn’t even take form as a denial.

“Gull.” Kit ran her fingers through her dull hair, stroking her. “C’mon.”

“I… I just.” Her mascara painted long streaks down her cheeks. “‘S the midnight jobs.”

“The midnight jobs?” 

“Y’mustn’t tattle ‘bout them.” She was slurring her words, still, and Kit doubted she’d be saying this if she was sober. “They’re just… sometimes M’ster Chen needs help disposing of bodies. And… and he needs a priestess. To make sure they don’t come back.” Her eyes stare through Kit, not seeing her. “They… they got good reason to,” she said hoarsely.

Her words painted pictures in the air; pictures out of the woodprints of blood and murder and gore. Pictures mostly in red and black and all the messy colours inside a human. Pictures of people Kit might have seen in passing in the street, or might have fought against when she was a kid in the gang scraps.

Unfamiliar, painful guilt churned in Kit’s stomach. Some of those ghosts, some of those people - Kit had been the one who killed them. As Mister Chen took over Yingsha’s territory, there were people who tried to turn her old gang to their purposes. And there was dissent in the ranks; men who took bribes, people plotting against the boss. Kit happened to them. And even when it was actually Bel or one of the other muscle, often he made sure she was seen there so she got the credit.

She just hadn’t thought that she was leaving ghosts. After all, it wasn’t like she’d seen any. Because of Gull’s thankless, horrifying work.

But that wasn’t all of it. She told Kit scraps of what happened in his basement, when he made sure that some of the nastier street spirits looked kindly on him and blessed his men and told him when someone was tattling on him. Bloody hands, whispering owls, hungry watchmen and more. Those little gods demanded their price, but Mister Chen was more than willing to pay. 

And his pet priestess was there, to negotiate the deals and host these spirits when he needed to talk to them.

Kit’s blood ran cold as her teacher and lover drunkenly sobbed into her shoulder and babbled about the scraps of horror she’d seen. About the sense of violation from hosting a bloody hand inside your own flesh. About the Calibration rituals she’d done during the dark times just gone, and the things she’d done them for.

The slow hiss of in-drawn breath. An unhappy tune growing more fearful still. “She is not the only mentor who hosts greater things than herself in her flesh, is she? I had thought you took to Unquestionable Lilunu a little too quickly. And the injuries she is left with when the Makers use her flesh... oh, child. Child, I fear where these parallels you see may take you.”

That protective dread was what led her to drag Gull to the storehouse on the corner of Essel and Tanner Lane, the secure one near Chen’s office that he used for important stuff that didn’t take up too much space. It was a three-storey building that used to be a stone smithy, with a wooden extension built on top of the original two floors that jutted out over the street. The lower levels were old, very old - old enough that they linked up to the sewers and Mister Chen used them to move things in and out of the warehouse there without any watchers noticing. Gull was one of Chen’s trusted few who maintained the wards and thaumaturgic locks, so the guards waved her and Kit inside past the thick locked doors. They didn’t notice the grip Kit had on her wrist, or the way her apprentice was almost pulling the pale-faced woman along - or perhaps they did, and simply thought Kit was dragging her in for another fist-to-face “talk” with the boss.

Mister Chen was not pleased to see them.

“Didn’t call for you two,” he grunted, looking up from examining the stolen opal his assayer was showing him. “Get out.”

“It’s important,” Kit insisted, forcing herself to smile. She clenched her teeth so hard her jaw hurt.

Chen considered it. Then; “Fine. Get out,” he told the assayer. He let her close the door behind her, then turned on Kit and the flinching Gull, shoulders squared, hands already in fists. 

“You been makin’ Gull do bloody work,” she accused. One way or another, what she was here to ask was going to annoy him, and she’d never really been good at diplomacy anyway. So bluntness it was. “S’been givin’ her nightmares. An’ you been hitting her; I seen the bruises. I...”

She hesitated despite herself, because demanding things of Mister Chen just... it wasn’t something you _did_. You asked, or you said you needed something and he’d generously offer. But you didn’t make demands. Everyone knew that.

Nevertheless, momentum kept her going, and after a brief stutter Kit forced her way forward through the rest of the sentence. “I want you to stop makin’ her do that stuff. Have... have Liho do it instead. An’ stop hitting her, too!”

The look in his eye turned even darker, and Gull clutched at her shoulder in terror, not daring to speak but shaking Kit to try and get her to shut up. Kit quickly scrambled for a reason that might convince a greedy, ruthless slum lord. “‘Cause...” she stuttered, “‘cause it ain’t doin’ her any good, and you got no reason to do it as long as she’s still bringin’ money in! It doesn’t get you anything, an’ you know it! S’prob’ly _hurting_ whatever you got her doing! So... so just... stop doing it. Okay?”

He waited with impressive calm until she stopped talking, staring at her darkly as those big fists clenched and unclenched.

“You done?” he asked once she was finished, and continued without waiting for an answer. “Good. Fuck off and never waste my time with this again, an’ I’ll forget it happened.”

“But it’s breaking her apart and-”

“Kit, shut up!” Gull almost-wailed. She stooped her head. “She’s just hyped up on coca,” she tried. “She don’t mean it.”

Mister Chen shook his head at Kit in disgust, teeth barely visible between his lips. “She understands yer position here. You don’t.” He huffed. “A harlot’s a harlot, whether or not she calls ‘erself ‘priestess’. You two gals work for me. Your bodies work for me. And when you’re broken down and can’t pull in the work, you mean _nothing_ to me.”

His tone rankled like nothing she had ever heard before. It… it wasn’t that! She wasn’t a harlot! Not like that! She hadn’t trained to learn god-pleasing dances and possession rites and prayer-picks and everything to be compared to some person straight into town who knew nothing but how to please a client! And to be dismissed like this by a fat thug-turned-slum-lord made something burn inside her that surged and boiled like one of Calley’s acids.

But arguing about that wouldn’t get her anywhere. She had to speak his language. “Well, we ain’t _cheap_ ,” she protested. Gull grabbed at her, trying to get her hands over her mouth, but Kit kept on, carried on by desperate nervous tension. “An’... an’ there ain’t too many trained-up priestesses who can do this for you! You can’t just go down the street and get a new Gull, or a new me! Liho can do your bloody stuff, they _like_ it! Gull ain’t _that_ much better than them at whatever you got her doing!”

“Liho ain’t always around to do it,” Chen said, and he was getting angry now; his impatience clearly showing. “You don’t know nothin’, kid. Shut it and get out. Last warning.”

This was not going at all according to plan. Kit tried desperately to think of something to salvage it, but could only come up with one option. Her hidden ace. Her winning hand. The card she’d been hoping she wouldn’t have to play, because it would leave him pissed off and maybe with a grudge against her.

But it would work. She knew it would.

“I’ll leave!” she threatened, calling out after him as he turned to walk away.

He stopped. Turned, slowly.

“You’ll what, now?”

His voice was very even, almost totally flat. But there was menace in it, and a nasty light in his eyes. One of his hands had slipped into his pocket, and Kit could see the shape of knuckle-dusters on his fingers.

“I-I’ll leave!” she said again, pulling out a knife with a shaking hand and pointing it at him. “I’ll take Gull and go work for one of your rivals! Your joyful priestess and your killer in blue, flipping sides on you! That’d hurt your rep! You can’t afford to lose us! Treat her better or I’ll take her and leave!”

Gull was white-knuckled around her wrist, her eyes wide and terrified, shaking her head in denial at Chen’s stare and trembling like a leaf.

But he didn’t explode at her in a rage of fury. He did something worse than explode.

He snorted dismissively.

“Fine then,” he grunted, waving the hand that wasn’t in his pocket. “Try. I’d have her killed for what she knows, and you for deserting, an’ you both know it. Maybe I’d even have Bel and Liho do it. _They_ do as they’re told.”

Kit blanched. As much as she loved Bel, as much as she respected Liho... they would. She knew they would. And Chen would follow through on it, too. She’d known that when she made the threat. But... but he wouldn’t _want_ to lose them, they were...

“What?” he scoffed. “You thought you were worth that much to me? Fuck off, kid. Yer useful, but you ain’t priceless. You cause more trouble than yer worth, I’ll cut you loose an’ forget you.”

All she could do was gape as her secret weapon evaporated like smoke.  He snorted again at her numb shock and Gull’s petrified fear.

His lips peeled back, revealing yellowing, gappy teeth. “See, kitten,” he almost purred, “the thing is, yer all fur puffed out and there’s nothing underneath. I _made_ Kit, the Blue Killer. Made sure folks for streets around know you’re a worshipper of Silent Saturn as well as Venus. Told ‘em how you trained with mystic monks from far away. Don’t matter that it isn’t true. But the thing is, you fucked up. You got high off your own supply, yeah? I know yer just a kid who’s got some talent with knives and who’s fucked in the head enough that she’ll cut off a man’s dick if I tell her to. Which ain’t a common trait, yeah, ‘cause most people got more sense than to do it.

“So, maybe, one day, you’ll be more than just a harlot - and no, you ain’t a cheap one. ‘Cause I paid well over the odds for you,” he leered at her, “in all yer little gifts and nice dresses and yer coca and those knives. And maybe one day you’ll be more than what you are. But right now, if you cross me, kitten, I’ll skin ya and sell it to the witches on Riverbone lane. Got it?” And the rumble was back. He grabbed her chin, twisted it he was looking at her. “I said, got it?” he demanded, spittle spraying in her face, his sweat from the heat in here wafting over her.

“Yeah,” she muttered sullenly.

“Yeah. You godsdamned better believe ‘yeah’. Now, you ain’t been showing me respect, so we gotta talk about how you make it up to me. And I do believe that until you do something nice for me, you ain’t getting any treats from me. But,” he smirked at her, “once that’s all settled, I reckon we can just let bygones be bygones. As long as you remember the way things work around here.” He shot a look at Gull, who shrank back. “An’ the same goes for _you_.”

“Yessir,” Gull said softly.

Kit wanted to hurt him. She wanted to scream and curse and break things. She wanted to throw a tantrum and break his nose and beat him bloody. But he was bigger than her and stronger than her and he was looking at her, glaring at her; trying to force her down.

So she submitted, like she always did. She made herself the girl he expected; the one who wanted her coca and her pretty knives and a warm bed in wintertime and who didn’t care about anyone or anything as much as herself. Who looked out for number one and nobody else, just like she had done ever since Rat.

She took that truth and threw all else aside; locking it deep in the back of her mind where she kept everything else she didn’t think about. She dropped the knife, letting it clatter to the ground with a muted clatter of metal on stone. Her head sank down and her shoulders came up in the familiar pattern of impotent anger. Her fists curled, but stayed sullenly at her sides. Her scowl was thunderous, her lips twisted in a snarl and every inch of her radiated bitter, furious resentment.

But it was the defeated sulkiness of someone who’d lost, and everyone there knew it.

Chen turned away. He was smug. He was confident. He’d won without even laying a hand on her.

Her second knife took him just to the left of his spine, sliding between the ribs and ripping through a kidney. It was so sudden that he didn’t even have time to scream as she rode him to the ground, shoving into his shoulder with a hard tackle so that he span as he fell.  Hitting the ground drove the knife in further, and now he yelled, tried to flail \- but it was too late, because Kit was on top of him now, and she had another pair of knives. She always did.

The snarl and scowl were gone. She was wide-eyed now; her pupils shrunk and her mouth a thin, neutral line of focus as she stabbed and slashed and cut. She didn’t blink once as she slashed the tendons of his upper arms, as she stabbed him over and over again in the chest, as she gouged out his eyes and wrenched her blade sideways through the muscles of his shoulder and sliced at his throat. Her lips pulled back to bare her teeth, but it wasn’t a smile; it was an adrenaline grimace. She still never blinked, even as his choked screams echoed around the warehouse, as he bucked and rolled and thrashed with weaker and weaker movements, as his blood sprayed across her to stain her clothes and paint her face.

She never made a sound or slowed her assault, even long after he stopped fighting back.

Eventually, the pain in her left arm and shoulder started to register. The adrenaline ebbed in her small frame, and her frenzied motions stuttered, then slowed, then stopped entirely. One of her knives had broken off two thirds of the way down the blade. The other was notched and bent from repeated impacts with bones and teeth and the stone floor of the warehouse. Kit sagged, staring at her hands where they were wrapped around the hilts, and managed to uncurl her fingers on the third or fourth try.

Music echoed in the silence, sharp and high and discordant.

A woman’s breath came quick and shallow, and she didn’t utter a word.

Shakily; slowly, Kit rolled herself off the b- the butchered slab of meat. There was a spreading pool of blood around it. Not that it mattered. Her clothes were already beyond saving.

The thought made her start to laugh; more a bit hysterically. After a few seconds it changed to quick gasps of hyperventilation as the reality of what had happened caught up to her.

Oh gods. Oh _gods_ , what had she just done?

* * *

Indeed, what had she done? The aftermath of Chen’s death was hushed and quick and terrified. There was no hiding the murder; not with the amount of blood Kit had spread around the room. Frantic, she begged, beguiled and guiltily bullied Gull into performing the rituals to keep his ghost from rising, and they took off through the back door, hiding Kit’s blood-drenched clothes under a heavy cloak. In their terror, there was only one place they could end up.

They went to Liho.

It was the first time Kit thought she’d ever really _surprised_ the androgynous fae-witch. Liho had always, for as long as Kit had known them, looked like they were in on some kind of joke the rest of the world wasn’t. They always talked to people like they knew what the punchline was before it kicked in - and knew it was at everyone else’s expense. But faced with a gore-soaked killer and a terrified lover; red blood soaking into blue robes to leave them an ugly purple... Liho’s flawless composure broke.

There was shouting. There was swearing. Kit brandished her knives, Liho threatened curses, Gull cried and cringed away from Liho’s shock-fuelled rage and Kit’s terrified bluster. At one point, Liho dragged her away into a side room while Kit got changed into less incriminating clothes and burnt the robes she’d murdered Chen in. When they came out, they were calmer - or at least, they’d hidden the face that showed their anger.

They talked for a long time, once the raised voices lowered, but Kit only registered the broad strokes of the conversation. She was numb, terrified, elated, sick with horror. The turbulent storm of emotions made her feel like she was floating outside her body, anchored only by a too-thin tether to an untrustworthy anchor in a world that was suddenly all storms and raging water crashing this way and that. Chen was gone. Chen was _dead_. A pillar of the world as she’d known it for years had been yanked away, and the tumble of stone and mortar had turned everything else on its head. It was all she could do to sit, and breathe, and not charge off to do something dumb like try to flee the city.

In the end, Liho agreed to fix things for them. They’d deal with Chen’s headless empire and stop it doing too much damage to the streets in its death throes. They’d make sure none of the guards that had seen Kit and Gull that night would speak, so the identity of his killer would never be known. They’d make sure nobody ever found out about the bloody work Gull had been doing for Chen, so that she’d never be forced to do it again.

All Kit and Gull had to do, they soothed with dragonfly words and humourless smiles, was hole up in Liho’s apartment for a week or so and let them handle things.

Liho was as good as their word - but their word wasn’t ever worth much. They spun sayings like silver. And they fixed things, alright. They fixed them up as neat and tight as a rat trap. And Chen’s gang was the rat.

Liho didn’t go to Chen’s gang, only just realising it had been beheaded and rousing with slow, lumbering anger at the attack. They went to Honest Mai, another of his rivals. To her they sold the dead man out, before his body was cold in the ground, and spilled every name and safehouse and secret they knew. And they knew so many, many things. They’d been working for Chen for years.

It was an almost bloodless coup. Within a day, Chen’s books were in Mai’s hands. By the end of the week, all his rackets and brothels had new management in charge, barely distinguishable from the last. There were a few deaths - a group of Chen’s most loyal thugs here, the guards on a certain storehouse there, all pointed out by the smiling figure by Mai’s side. But so brutal and unexpected was the decapitation, and so utter the betrayal, that the resistance to the takeover never stood a chance.

When Kit and Gull left Liho’s lodgings the next week, it was to a changed Firewander - a change so encompassing and subtle that it was invisible from the street; like trying to see the shape of the whole city from down amidst the gutters. Liho had done as they said; had gotten them off without consequence. Had pulled out a miracle from nowhere.

Only… the funny thing was how _fast_ they had everything set up. Almost like they were already working for Honest Mai. Like they’d been angry not at what Kit had done, but at when and how she’d done it.

There wasn’t a place for Gull and Kit in the new order in these streets. Well, there wasn’t a place for Kit, Liho made clear. Bel had sloped over to Honest Mai without much fuss; content as long as he was being paid. Calley had weathered the storm and stayed out of it; already on her way out of the affairs of the street. And Gull could keep on doing what she’d been doing, if she wanted. She didn’t. But Kit... Liho wasn’t going to trust Kit again. Not enough to turn their back on her, if they ever had at all. And Honest Mai was going to listen to them.

Kit knew what Liho meant really, though. They wanted her away from Gull. Not just because Kit had killed Mister Chen. Because they were jealous that Gull preferred her company these days. Gull and Liho were barely sleeping together - and usually only when she was drunk. Liho blamed Kit, which was really fucking rich if you asked her.

So the two women moved on. There was always work for priestesses, right? Blessings and bringing a bit of joy to paying customers’s lives. So what if they had to move to the other side of Firewander? At least they were still alive, and while… while things were going to be a bit more tenuous without Mister Chen’s retainer, it could have been worse. 

But maybe Mister Chen had laid a death-curse on her or something, because after that, everything seemed to go wrong for Kit.

A shuddering breath, with that little wheeze in it of a too-tight, scared chest. “You want to be loved. You give your love freely. But you always had a razor of the Silent Wind in your heart, even before I found you. Chen found it out the hard way. So did Rat. And I remember the little glances that Sasimana gave you sometimes, in those first days.” The music is sad, quiet. “You know that, I think. Or you will. You’ll learn it and deny your knowledge of it. And for as long as you do, this will come to pass again and again. It’s in your nature.”

* * *

** Love Hurts **  
The girl was eighteen years old, and she sat alone in a dark room with her knives in hand, listening through the wall. The fading light of evening shone through the grime-encrusted window, giving barely enough light to see the features of the room - a narrow bed, a pair of crates stacked atop each other to hold clothes, a haphazardly-dropped pile of furs for extra warmth in the coming cold; unneeded now in late Fire. She had no candle, though, not for heat and not for light. It would have given her presence away if she had.

Kit Firewander sat alone in the dark, breathing lightly and wrinkling her nose against the stench of alcohol and dreamdust that lay heavy on the air. Short-haired and vigilant, she made no movement that might give her away, but instead sat still as a statue while the candle in the room next door burned down and dark came over Nexus. She fisted her hands around the hilts of her knives and listened to the gasps and grunts and moans from the other bedroom of the shabby little Firewander apartment. Listened, and waited. And thought.

“Tell me of Gull, child.” A sad voice, but with steel command in it. “Tell me of her; the good and the bad. Remember what you felt, stripped of the lies that it was all sweet love and happiness. Think back to those days, and tell me the truth.”

This is the truth about Gull: she was damaged. Even early on, Kit knew she wasn't like other women. When she was young, that had seemed like a good thing. With hindsight, it became much clearer.

What was she to Kit? Mother, lover, teacher, partner? She was all of these things. She was someone who cared for Kit, who let her live with her, who tried to protect her from the worst horrors of the Nexan streets. She was the first woman Kit ever loved, who'd hold her in the night and care for her when the Nexan flu hit. She was the one who taught Kit how to flirt, the little magics to break cheap warding spells and all the tricks Gull was starting to struggle with as the shake in her hands got worse. She was Kit’s partner in crime.

Kit loved her. She also sometimes hated her.

She hated Gull because she could never rely on her. Not after she’d started to fall apart. When times were good, they were wonderful; when they were bad, she spent their rent money on booze and dreamdust.  Over the course of the year since Chen’s death, they had never lived in the same place for more than a season before being evicted again. When they were on the streets, Gull often wound up wasting what money they managed to scrounge up for a bed out of the cold. They had to huddle up in alleys or call in favours - and those favours were usually paid with their bodies.

Every time it happened, Gull cried and apologised and said it would never happen again. It always did. When she was hurting and had gone too long without her fix, Gull loved her dreamdust more than she loved Kit.

Kit hated Gull because the older woman had the booze shakes so bad that she couldn’t pick locks like she used to.  Even when they met, Gull mostly lived off her services as a street witch and a lockpick. But now she was mostly getting coin from harlotry \- and one of the things Kit did for her was this; was finding her men and waiting with her knives in case they got violent with her. She had to sit here in the dark and listen to men spilling their lust into the woman she loved.

And sometimes if they hooked a big spender, they’d pay extra for two girls. Kit hated those men, she hated herself for doing it for the money, and she hated Gull for even suggesting it, for bringing other people into their bed with the both of them.

She still did it, though. Because she loved Gull, and because Nexus was no place to be a woman alone.

There were a lot of things she did for Gull. And some were things that she had to do, rather than chose to do. Like cutting her off from the money when she wanted to put them out on the street again in search of her fix. Like protecting her from thugs who came around looking for payment on drugs she’d bought on credit. Like sitting here and doing nothing as Gull let men fuck her, waiting for a cry of distress or the sounds of scuffling.

Like looking for her when she didn’t come home.

* * *

**Hide and Seek**  
Calibration came and went, and eighteen-year old Kit picked her way through the icy streets. It was bitterly cold outside. It was snowing soot-laden snow that turned everything a melancholy grey. The canals were frozen over and the message runners donned skates as they flitted from place to place.

Her arm hurt in the weather. It had healed badly the second time she broke it. It was still healing, and it didn’t have the strength it once had. She’d got in a stupid fight near their new digs and very nearly hadn’t walked away from it at all. In a certain light, the fact she’d managed to run with her arm all fucked up like this was a minor miracle. But it was right up by her shoulder, and it was stiff and painful and that meant that a lot of her thieving tricks just didn’t work.

She wouldn’t be out in the weather if she could avoid it. Even with her layers of shawls and wrappings over her thick woolen dress, the winds off the rivers blew through her. But she had to be out, in one of the seedy streets close to the strange streets. She kept her good arm on the iron knife she carried for luck - and more than luck.  The plants growing up the walls had too many colours in their leaves; the birds on the roofs had human eyes. But none of them bothered her. She knew where she was going. Unfortunately.

The shattered windows still had some glass, though it rippled and bulged like the surface of a street bubble. The reflections showed the street in ways other than it was. Kit didn’t pay attention to that, though. She knew better. Paying too much attention to your reflection in these streets might give it ideas, and it might want to take your place if it got jealous.

Her nose wrinkled at the rank stench of unwashed bodies and heavy dreamdust-scent as she entered the dreamden. “Buying or selling, love?” asked the pretty man behind the counter with the leaf green hair and the pupil-less eyes.

“Neither,” Kit said sullenly. “I’m getting someone.”

He focused on her. “Oh, yeah, you’re Gull’s street girl. You know, she still owes me for-”

Kit was in his face before he could finish the sentence, a knife up against his eyeball. The metal was so close to his lid that he didn’t dare blink. “I ain’t paying nothing,” Kit hissed, her voice like a wire, “and I ain’t no-one’s street girl. I’m taking Gull ‘cause she ain’t been back in three days.” She let go of his collar, but didn’t put the knife away.

“You can’t threaten me!” the man blustered, in denial of the truth. Chen was dead and forgotten, but Kit’s reputation hadn’t quite faded away in Firewander yet. “And she owes me!”

“If you were fucking stupid enough to give her more dreamdust on credit when she ain’t got the coin, you might as well be tossing it in the canal,” Kit growled. “You got more than enough coin from her already.”

Gull was curled up in the corner, filthy and nearly naked. She'd probably sold her clothes again to keep her dreams going. Or the scum in this place took them. Her hair was the main light in the room, and it was like all the colour and life in her body was in it as it rippled through many colours.

“Is this why you changed my hair as you did, I wonder? She was a mother of sorts to you, and a mentor. And... someone to be rescued and protected, too. Perhaps it was your way of paying tribute to your teacher. Or... perhaps this is why you so identify with the magic in your own hair. Why you pass it on to your children and make it so much a part of your self-image.”

Kit balled her hands into fists and nearly went to slap Gull out of the trance. She didn’t, but only because it wouldn’t work. Instead she pulled out a nearly empty pouch from inside her layers and fished out one of the teaballs she got Old Calley to cook her up for times like this. She pried Gull's mouth open, pushed it in, and then held her mouth shut so she couldn’t spit out the bitter medicine.

Gull’s eyes flickered open as the teaball kicked in. Her face screwed up and she tried to open her mouth, but Kit wouldn’t let her. Not until she was weeping and trying to scream and it had melted away in her mouth. Gull huddled in on herself, tears streaming down her face.

_Then_ Kit slapped her. “What’s this?” she demanded.

“Why’d you have to go do…”

Kit hit her again. “You said you were fucking going out for work!” she screamed in her face. “Three fucking days!”

The older woman huddled up, as though Kit were the elder and she were the child. “I… it weren’t that long.”

“Yes it was! How the fuck would you know? You were so far out of it the city could’a burnt down without you noticing!”

Gull was shivering and twitching as the teaball purged all the sleep from her system. “I met someone and… I just needed a pick up, but I was going to take most of the money home and-”  Kit raised her hand again, and Gull shrank back. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Kit, they tricked me. I was just gonna buy some to take back and have nice dreams at home but… I had to have some, they said, to make sure it was good and then I was already dreaming and…”

Kit ignored her babbling as she stripped away some of her outer layers and tossed them down on the floor before Gull. “Get dressed,” she said sharply. “You’re coming home. And so help me, if you do this again, I’m leaving you.”

“Kit, Kit, Kit, I promise I won’t, I promise.”

They were lying. Both of them. They knew it. Gull wouldn’t give up her habits , and Kit wouldn’t leave her. They were tied together, chest-to-chest in toxic love.

* * *

** Ruined Tranquility **  
But it was never just bad with Gull. It would have been easier if it was.  If they did nothing but fight, if she wanted to hurt Kit, if she’d _known_ that Gull just wanted coin for her booze and her dreamdust, then she wouldn't have stayed.

But there were always good days, though as time went on they seemed to be getting rarer and rarer. Days when Gull had a priestess job and Kit came along as her student. Those days, they sprang the coin to get their robes and bells out of hock and did what they could for makeup, and they did a job that got respect.

The weather was hot and muggy; early Wood as hot as Fire should have been. Heat haze hung heavy over the Nexan roofs; the streets were dusty and the plants were yellowing.

“So how long is it going to be?” asked the Council’s agent. She was a pinched-faced woman, tight with the coin. “We can’t let anyone past until someone gets rid of the touchy clay-woman.”

Gull rubbed her hand over her face, bleary-eyed in the light. She smudged her lip-paint, and Kit winced. “If she’s not too unhappy, should only be an hour or so,” she said, looking over the area of the road where the cobbles had been overturned and two carts lay half-sunken in the liquified soil underneath. “If… uh… if that’s all.”

Kit stepped in. “Do you know if anyone’s stolen anything here recently?” she asked. “Or any other offence to the spirit?”

The agent sniffed. “This is Firewander. Of course they’ll have found a way to piss off the spirits.”

Her fingers twitched, but Kit didn’t say anything. She just smiled at the sour-faced woman who was paying their bill, and started to rummage through the bags. “Tobacco, spirits, salt,” she said. “I bought them all, master.”

In truth she’d grabbed them all from the side when the agent had come hollering about a job, but in her few years as a trainee priestess, Kit had learned well that human vices were things spirits were perfectly fond of.

“Good, good,” Gull said. She was paying more attention, pacing back and forwards with something of her old energy as she examined the clay-splattered cobbles just outside the sinkhole.

Kit breathed a soft sigh of relief. Her girlfriend was getting her act together. Gull might have seemed to care less and less, but Kit needed those days to make it through the bad times. She wasn’t working any poorly-paid jobs she could find, painfully aware that a few years ago everything had been better and she hadn’t been half-crippled. She was a joyful priestess, doing work that mattered. Prayers and dances for the gods; the works. Those days paid well, too. Not just in coin; lots of people tossed a priestess some food or old clothing in return for a kiss and a blessing when they saw them at work.

Gods, she wished Rat was here. She shouldn’t. Thinking of the dead at times like this might anger the spirit here and now. But he’d always been better at this kind of thing than her.

“Except you were angry at him too. Hating him for vanishing on you. Blaming him for how low you had fallen.”

… yeah. Angry, too. That must have been part of it.

“Kit!” Gull called out as she pulled their spare-blanket out of her bag, laying it down in front of the patch of ground. “Pass me the offerings. And Omon,” she called over to the sanxian player they’d picked up on the way there, “I need summin’ calming, but no water in it. Earthy tones. We got to remind the clay-woman she’s from the dry land, or she’ll make a right proper sink-hole.” She pulled two of the incense sticks from the locked box Kit didn’t let her have the key to. “Kit, you up to dance in her honour?”

“Yes, priestess,” Kit said, hurrying to pass the satchel.

Gull stuck the incense sticks in the ground and lit them from the little lantern she carried. “Then talk it over with Omon - you’ll need to make sure he’s doing summin’ that works with the Drying Earth Steps or the Sun-On-Shore Steps.”

Kit swallowed. Her shoulder got stiff, and she couldn’t easily raise it above her shoulder - did Gull remember that? Sun-On-Shore would be easier with how her left arm could be, and she hurried to talk to the musician to make things easier on herself.

Things worked out. More or less. The elemental - which looked like a roundly fat woman covered in clay - crawled out of the ground to get her hands on the tobacco and drink left out for her, and Gull managed to talk things out. The elemental sunk back into the ground, dragging the cobbles back into place, and Kit sat down to watch their things as Gull talked things over with the agent of the Council. And, importantly, get their payment.

That was going to be rent for the next week. At least. Kit was going to damn well make sure that most of this job went on things that weren’t booze or dreamdust. Just the knowledge of that was like lead weights she’d been carrying around for weeks suddenly weren’t there.

The sound of a tamborine drew her attention, and she turned to see an Immaculate nun making her way along the street. She had one of their clay donation cups in her other hand, and bells on her ankles.

“Street’s closed for the moment,” Kit called out. Her lips twisted. “We dealt with the spirit, no thanks to your lot.”

The nun paused. The woman in orange looked at the woman in blue, her nose wrinkling slightly. She didn’t show any signs of knowing who Kit was. And a shock of recognition hit Kit. She was the novice she had seen _that_ day. No longer a novice, she was dressed in a proper robe, head shaven, with her first rank tattoos on her bare forearms.

“I see,” she said softly. “So the Council went to cheaper contractors.” She inclined her head, tapping her tamborine twice. “A blessing to you, in the hope that you have not harmed your status in the rolls of heaven this day.”

She said something else, but the sound was drowned out by the ringing in Kit’s ears as the world seemed to narrow down to her and the nun and nothing else. Her rage was so vast that it defied her skin’s ability to contain it. Cold flowed out across her shoulders like she’d been drenched in ice, and she felt as though she were falling backwards; pulled out of her body and across fathomless distance to watch herself stand stiffly in front of the patronising, condescending bitch and somehow, extraordinarily, contrive to not kill her on the spot for that contemptuous wrinkling of her nose, that judgemental tone with which she gave a cursory blessing.

It was only the ache of her shoulder and the weight of the Council woman’s eyes that stopped her lunging for the nun’s throat or going for a knife. She could feel herself trembling, hear a hiss that might have been hers or might just have been the blood roaring in her ears as she held herself determinedly still. That was the only way she could keep herself safe and out of trouble, so furious was she. There was no room for thoughts of replying, or even walking away. All she could do was bend her whole remaining will and rational mind to remaining motionless; not lifting an arm or taking a step.

The last time she’d been this angry, she had murdered a crime lord and destroyed her own life.

But even the voice of reason was quiet against the pounding hate and spite and fury. This bitch dared to _bless_ her? This woman, in a robe that really wasn’t any better quality than Kit’s? Who carried a tambourine and a begging bowl? Who lived down here in Firewander, down in the squalor and the muck? Who dared to be happy, still, with this miserable kind of life?

And she thought she was _better_ than Kit? So much better that she could bless her? She looked at Kit and thought her so low and so pathetic that she needed the _favour_ of her callous dragon-gods?

“You hated her because she had other people. It was not simply her and her mentor - who, child, was not well. You knew that then and you certainly know that now.” A troubled hum. “It says ill things about how you relate to others now.”

Kit glared at the nun as she left; words beginning to return to her as the source of her anger retreated. She felt suddenly exhausted - far more so than the dance had left her; shaken and wrung out by the fury that had overcome her. Somehow the sun seemed darker, and she could taste blood. She had bitten the inside of her cheek, and her nails had left gouges in her palms.

“Got things packed up?” Gull asked, clutching the Council promissory notes tightly in her fist. “Let’s get these things cashed and then we can go get summin’ good to eat!”

“Yeah,” Kit whispered through clenched teeth. “Yeah.”

* * *

** Drudge Work **  
Kit was nineteen, and it was early in Crowning Air. The snow outside was melting, leaving the streets slushy, and the icicles were dripping down outside the small window. She was up to her elbows in water in the backroom of the Drunken Duck, scrubbing at the pots, when Madam Xiahao yelled at her.

“What?” she hollered back.

“Petal’s not come in for her shift!” the old crone ordered. “Stop with the washing, get out there and serve! And girl, if any coins go missing…”

“I told you it weren’t me!”

“And I told you you’re a born liar, y’trollop!” She glowered, and when Kit didn’t move, made a disgusting sound at the back of her throat. “Get out there! And smile at the men! I know what you girls are like!”

“Fucking hag,” Kit muttered under her breath. She wiped her hands on the old rag, adjusted her hair and pinched her cheeks to give them more colour. And then she headed out into the bar. It was full of hash smoke and stank of old stale beer and wine.

She hated this. She really did. But with her arm stiff in the cold and the pickings thin for theft without a good fence, she hadn’t had much luck. She’d had to do what she never thought she’d do; she got a shitty job in the backroom of a bar washing dishes. Her; Kit Firewander, who once made men flinch away just from the sight of her perched on Bel’s shoulders or playing with her knives. The worst thing was that she was taking home more coin than she was stealing during Air.

And maybe she was supplementing her income on the side. She wasn’t a harlot! She wasn’t! It was just…

A sigh. “And now I understand why Vali’s keruby take the forms they do. They are who you were; the harlot, the drudge and the petty thief. You might have left that behind, but you echo in them. And no matter how much you pretend that you were a master thief, you weren’t. That’s why you gave up the street rat to become the princess. It gave you back your pride.”

Some _asshole_ pinched her bottom. There wasn’t much to pinch, but he was still getting handy with her and there was nothing she’d like more than to cut that hand off and force it up his behind. “Hey, girl,” he slurred. “Don’t rush off so soon.” From the callouses, he looked like a builder, or maybe a metal worker. “Come and stay a while.”

She forced herself to smile. “Of course. Would you like another drink, sir?” The word burned in her craw; an old and familiar hatred. “Or… something else?”

He was already clearly drunk. Maybe that was why he pinched the bottom of a scarred, skinny piece of nothing like her. “What you got?” he asked with a belch. His friends at the table chuckled approvingly.

“Well, I could always give you a hand…” she offered, putting that husky note into her voice just like Gull taught her to. “That’d be one eighth. If you want me to suck you, a quarter.”

Things were arranged, as they were, and Kit stepped out to the back alley with the man. She wasn’t sure whether she was glad he went for the cheaper option. It took longer than she’d have liked, because the drunk asshole found it hard to get it up, but she whispered pleasantries in his ear and told him how handsome he was and eventually that did the trick.

Wiping her hand off in the melting snow, Kit sighed and hurried back inside to keep serving drinks. The eighth vanished into her inner layers. Hopefully Madam Xiahao hadn’t noticed she was missing, ‘cause if she had she’d take the cut from her wages. But fortunately it was busy enough her absence hadn’t been missed, and she got back to the drudgery of work.

At the end of her shift, Kit took her coin and slunk off, jamming her hands up her sleeves. The roads were slushy, and when the wind picked up it was coming in off the river and was bitterly cold. Her skirts were soaked to the hem when some _utter fucking asshole_ came rattling past in a four-horse sled and flicked up dirty slush all over her.

“Go throw yourself in a canal!” Kit screamed after them, scowling at the merchant’s insignia. Fuck them. Fuck her life.

The worst thing was that things were looking up compared to how they were last season. With her wages from the Drunken Duck, Kit and Gull were back in an apartment. It was a two-room shithole over a carpenter’s shop, but at least the rent was paid to the end of the week. It meant Kit was free from the terror of ‘where am I going to be sleeping tonight?’. And the rent was only a bit more than how much slophouse beds had been costing them.

She was just working in this fucking bar until the weather warmed up, Kit promised herself as she climbed the narrow, stinking stairs up to their apartment. Just until her arm stopped hurting so much. Then she could get a big haul, especially if Gull got over her blues. They could make some cash, put back on the weight they’d lost, start climbing back up the ladder. Until then, they were just biding their time and spinning their wheels in place.

She reached into her inner layers and pulled out the thick key. It was trash. Kit could pick their lock in her sleep. That was why she and Gull had put a little hex on it. She kissed the lock, then unlocked it, letting herself in. 

To her surprise, Gull was there, huddled in a ball on the bed. Her hair was a deep, dull blue.

“What are you doing here?” Kit demanded. She dumped down her cloth bag with the food she filched on the way. “I thought I told you you should be selling prayers today.”

“Don’t yell at me,” Gull groaned. “I can’t take it, Kit.”

“Course I’m going to fucking yell at you!” Her girlfriend’s patheticness just set Kit off. “What the fuck are you playing at? Food an’ rent and your booze don’t pay for itself.”

“I know! I know!”

“Then what are you playing at!”

Gull had been crying. Her eyes were a deep, hopeless grey and her nose was running. The left side of her face had a fading, green-yellow bruise on it. “Oh, are you going to hit me again?” she accused in a tear-choked voice.

The guilt stabbed into Kit’s gut, and she took an unsteady step back. “I… you know I said sorry,” she defended. “A-and I only did it because you wouldn’t go out for that job. It was a job, Gull! With pay! An’ you know I can’t pay for both of us, Gull. You know that. You know I love you, but love ain’t paying the rent for this place. An’ you said you were going to make up some prayers and sell ‘em.”

“I can’t!”

“You what?”

“I can’t…” Gull said in a tiny whisper. She held out her hand. It was trembling constantly. “I got the papers and the inks, I did, I did,” she gestured to the scraps behind her. “But I can’t do it, Kit.” Tears leaked from her eyes. “Even after… I had a pick-me-up. I’m still shaking. I tried and I tried and it didn’t work!” She hyperventilated into her cupped hands. “I can’t do it. I can’t write all proper no more. The shakes are getting worse.”

“It’s… it’s just… once we’re in better times, when it’s warmer, when it’s not so fucking cold all the time...” Kit began.

“No, it’s not,” Gull moaned. “I can’t write no more and… fuck, if only I’d taught you back when times were good.” She slapped herself around the face. “I’m worthless. A drunk old biddy. Fuck Cally; she knew how to do things proper. She's got a shop, and her daughters make sure she's set up. But I just fuck everything up.”

Kit rushed in, to wrap her arms around Gull. She was so thin. Between the dreamdust and the missed meals when they were sleeping rough, she’d lost her curves. And she smelt of her dreamdust even now. “Things are gonna get better,” she crooned. “Look… look, I got coin, I… I jerked a guy off for you too and I picked up some food for free on the way back. We can make it work. Just… sure, even if you can’t do the prayers no more, we can still get jobs as priestesses, right. An’ you can get coin other ways or… or something. We’re not going back on the streets. We’re not!”

She was lying. It hurt to admit it, but their priestess work had been suffering. Kit just _didn’t know enough_ , that was the problem. Gull had tried to continue her tutelage after Chen’s death, but without his resources funding the materials they needed, it had been slower and more fumbling than ever. She’d taught Kit the theory behind sacred dream-questing and spirit-hosting a few months ago, but it had been half-hearted at best. There’d been no Liho to explain _their_ branch of the tradition - not that Kit would’ve _wanted_ their teaching; the fucking traitor. There’d been no Rat to learn with her and ask insightful questions she wouldn’t even have thought of on her own. And Gull... Gull had been grieving, and drunk, and had stumbled and slurred over her sentences until they’d given up with the lesson only half-finished.

It was Gull’s fault for not teaching her more when she was younger, and ruining herself with dreamdust and booze. It was Calley’s fault for moving her shop after the Earth riots and going to live with her daughters, whose house Kit didn’t know. It was fucking _Liho’s_ fault for fucking them over and leaving them with nothing. It was Kit’s fault for killing Chen and turning them out on the streets at all.

“No.” Chords ripple up and down the scale, loving and regretful. “No, child. That is not what made you feel guilty. You felt no guilt for killing him. You felt guilt for not seeing what his death would do. You felt guilt for not learning more of the priestess’s art before he died. You felt guilt...” A weary sigh. “You felt guilt for not being clever enough. And you turned that on its side and embraced it, didn’t you? You always let others do the thinking for you - but this made you give up on ever growing past that. You broke your life through ignorance and shortsightedness, and ever since then you have thought yourself stupid. Even after proving that you are so no longer.”

Pressing her head against Gull’s shoulder, Kit forced away the crippling sense of inadequacy. There were a lot of people she could blame. But in the end, there wasn’t any one person responsible for the shit they were in.

It was the world’s fault, for tilting things against them.

* * *

** The Last Day **  
There was no goodbye, when it ended. No late-Air morning of lazy kisses and whispered affection.  She didn’t get to tell Gull how much she adored her, or assure her that she was the best part of Kit’s life. There was no last hug, no heartfelt confession or teasing offer to stay in bed all morning.

They went to bed angry; fresh off another argument about money that only ended at Gull’s promise she had a job the next day; witch-work down on East Soot Lane, hexing an unfaithful husband with painful sores. They didn’t make love - Kit was still simmering, and Gull needed to get enough sleep to be functional by noon. When Kit woke up, she rolled out of bed with only a glance at the mop of electric-blue hair buried in the cheap pillow and the arm dangling off the side of the narrow mattress.

The ever-present scent of dreamdust hung in the flat, never fully gone even on Gull’s better days, and Kit muttered dire imperatives over her shoulder to be up on time and out to get coin. Then she pulled on her clothes and hurried out the door, to another shitty Air-season job in a line of shitty Air-season jobs.

Kit never saw Gull alive again. She saw her dead, though. One of the Council’s men came knocking at the door of their shitty apartment two days later - and he had a purple sash. Kit knew what that meant. But still she held out hope.

Hope abandoned her, just like everyone else.

Kit couldn’t really remember what Gull had looked like, lying there. The memories were wrapped away, forced down deep so it was like someone had told her what she’d seen.  Gull’s hair; dull and lifeless. Her features, bloated from the water, nibbled on by fish. Naked; whoever had done this had stripped her when they tossed her into the canal. And the blow to her head that had probably been what had killed her, that’s what the corpse-taker had said.

She could put together the stupid, stupid truth about what had probably happened, especially later after she checked that Gull had made it to her job and been paid for it. Someone had gone after her for the cash, and hit her too hard. Or maybe she’d just fallen in the fracas and hit her head. And then they’d taken everything they could sell and dumped the body in the canal.

Gull had no one else; no family Kit knew of, estranged from Calley, no real friends - only people who’d drunk or taken dreamdust with her and they didn’t have coin to pay the Council its death dues. Kit had to pay, and there were extra fees because of how Gull died. Even the cost of the oil for the cremation, because there were new Civilities on how the bodies of murder victims could be disposed of.

Even after she’d pawned everything they had left, Kit couldn’t make rent.  So she was back on the streets - and it was cold this time of year, very cold. And unlike previous years, she didn’t have Gull or Rat. She was a woman, alone in Nexus.

Water was a bad season that year. Kit… did what she had to to make sure she got to eat. Too wrapped up in her own numb, exhausted misery to have pride. She wanted to be angry. Anger would have been good. It would have meant she felt something. But this was Nexus and this was Firewander. Who wouldn’t slug a tired and inattentive woman over the head if they saw she had cash? Were there suspects? Yeah, damn near everyone she saw on some streets. It was Rat all over again - a loved one cut out of her life, and no way to tell who by.

If only she had someone to blame.

“Ahhh.” A soft sigh of epiphany. “You have always been bad at making friends, child. I had wondered. You hold very few people very tightly, and if you lose one, you are left all alone. You cling so fiercely and pour so much into your bonds that you can only maintain a handful at a time. And so you had no one to fall back on when you lost Gull - and even now you associate with so few of your peers that I fear what might happen should you lose the ones you know.”

She didn’t have anyone to turn to, and so she had to lower her standards - and then lower them further. Kit didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘irony’, but she knew that some fucking god had it out for her when she wound up squatting in the stinking alleyway she first met Rat in. Here she was, back where she started. Only now she had a weak arm, a cough that wouldn’t clear, and plenty of enemies on certain streets. Salvaged wood and stolen cloth made her a lean-to shack, something to keep the wind and the snow off her. She wasn’t earning enough to pay rent by the week, and this wasn’t really any worse than the flophouse.

This was the truth; Kit wasn’t a daring thief and rogue for her last few seasons on the streets. She wasn’t much of anything.  In retrospect she could have tried harder to find Calley, could have tried all sorts of things, but she was too torn up inside and wrapped in her misery to think of anything longer term. She didn’t want to die, but she didn’t exactly care about living. And as the numbness and grief wore thin, her bitterness ran deeper and deeper, and her eyes turned up from that first filthy alley she’d squatted in towards the house of Makoa Kasseni, from which she’d come to it from.

Those tall buildings, with their honey coloured stone. The way they sat back from the street, surrounded by luxurious gardens that were always green. They had their own witches here, who cared for their plants. Some of them had greenhouses made of glass - glass! - and fancy terraces with butterfly-wing paper decorations fluttered above the house on thin wires. They were never cold. Never hungry. Never alone.  She hated them. Hated them so much. Hated them too much.

It wasn’t a brilliant, priceless robbery she planned. It wasn’t some high-risk, high-reward scheme. It was just a shot at revenge. At hurting the woman who’d set the ball rolling to cause all the pain in Kit’s life. She didn’t even make a plan on how to get out, and perhaps she didn’t want one.

But when the moment came, that long-held atavistic survival instinct proved too hard to shake.

And just like she’d fucked up everything else in her life, she fucked up her vengeance too.

* * *

** Trapped Again **  
Kit was nineteen, and turning twenty in a few hours time. It was her birthday, though she didn’t know it. Outside, it was hot and muggy, with clouds hanging over the city. Promising rain, but not giving it. The city stank of the river; it was flooding again over in Nighthammer.

That was what was happening out in the city. But on the night of her twentieth birthday, Kit Firewander of Nexus didn’t know any of that.

Kit was in a very bad place. The walls were bare stone, old and filthy. Part of the old basements in the underlayers of the city, which had once been penthouses before the Nexan mud had claimed them. The door was solid, though, and locked from the outside. There were no windows, just a stinking drain in the corner. Someone had carved something into the walls, though. But of course, Kit couldn’t read it. Maybe it was time to learn.

After all, if she just stared up at the wall, she wouldn’t have to think about other things. Wouldn’t have to think about what was going on in the half of the room she couldn’t see; one eye swollen shut and blinded by blood in the other to everything below her waist. She hurt everywhere. She’d tried biting. She’d tried kicking. She’d tried spitting. But they’d gagged her with a rag and she was made of sticks and bones. She couldn’t fight back. 

So she’d teach herself to read instead, while her eyes stung with tears of rage and hatred and pain and humiliation. And not think about anything else.

* * *

“And that’s where I entered the story,” the voice says. Kit’s heard it before - ever since she came to Nexus it’s been there; lurking in the background and speaking to her softly. It’s reminded her of things she’s forgotten, prompted her to think of things she hasn’t realised - even talked in cryptic ways about things she might one day be. Always there, always listening, always in the background in a way she’s never thought about; heard in one moment and forgotten the next.

She looks up and the woman is there; her skin the pale white-grey of the skies above Firewander, dressed in a short sleeveless dress-thing that seems to be made out of woven metal. It looks a bit like a chain-mail shirt, but if it is one; it’s so fine that Kit can’t see the rings. Her hair moves like a living thing and glows like Gull’s, but not just blue - there’s an oilslick rainbow of colours in it. Her eyes are kind, her figure is plump and maternal, and her hands...

Her hands each bear a dozen long jellyfish-tendril fingers that are twitching, moving; eternally stroking the air. Cascading melancholy music rippling its way through the world that seems to both mourn the beaten, broken girl and apologise. She never came through the door. She just wove herself out of thin air, the sound arriving first as if her body is nothing more than music.

“I found you in that awful cell,” she says, matching word to deed, “and knelt beside you and brushed the hair from your sweat-stained skin and washed the dirt from your open wounds. I offered you what I carried natal within me; a gift such that no man would ever confine you again. You asked the cost, do you remember? And I said that you would help free those who were bound, were hurt, were even crippled by the cruelty of their captors. And you said...”

A bruised hand reaches up to grasp at the hair, clutching it tightly. Not in weakness, but in conviction.

“ _Deal_.”

* * *

The demon envelops her, and for a moment she loses the sense of her body; loses everything behind the engulfing Chrysalis. Woven hair veils her eyes, its rustling fills her ears, the scent of its oils flavours her air and the brush of it dominates her touch. Memory returns. So does self-awareness. She is not Kit Firewander. She has not been that bitter, hateful, ugly girl for half a decade, and she has changed much in those eventful years.

Then the Chrysalis of memory recedes, and in her mind’s eye Keris beholds the ruin the fae have made of her.

They have eaten her legs. That is the first thing she notices,  and she cries out with horror at the pain and the violation. Her powerful feet and toned shins are gone, and her thighs end in useless stumps after only a few inches; bloodied and marked by teeth and fangs and sucker-mouths.  Sobbing, gasping, she wrenches her attention away from the unnatural empty space where limbs should be and finds another gaping loss almost immediately; they have shaven her head as well. Her long red locks are shorn away; her scalp is left pitted and gouged by tooth and claw where they have taken her natural weapons from her.

And they did not stop there.

With her ability to run gnawed away and her primary weapon cut off, the fae must have feasted on her at their leisure. Three of her fingers are missing; nothing but her ring and little finger left on her right hand. Her left arm is broken so thoroughly and so stomach-turningly that the medic in her says it is lost, and that only amputation remains as an option. Bite marks litter her body; gouges and awful inverted abscesses carved out of her where her steel-hard skin has been pierced and the flesh beneath sucked out. Many have filled in again with brass and basalt to leave hard metallic lumps down her arms and across her ribs, and she can feel the healing process speeding along in the recesses that are still leaking blood and fluids. How fortunate for them, to find a creature that heals so quickly as they feast. How lucky; to gain a meal that never runs out.

They have obviously made the most of it. A nightmarish _hole_ gapes wide in her stomach. Here, it was not a single point pierced and the flesh around it liquified by stomach fluids and sucked out again. Here the skin was cut and sawed and peeled away to let the vultures feast directly. Organs and offal glisten on display; her intestines partially pulled out and eaten like a delicacy. Metal gleams around the inside of the cavity; the regeneration and resilience of her inhuman body marking the only reason she isn’t already dead.

Vaguely, Keris realises she’s screaming. She’s screaming, and she can’t stop screaming, and she hears it from far away as if in a dream. This can’t be her. This can’t have really happened to her. This is a nightmare; a sickening, horrifying night terror that will fade away when she wakes up and leave her sweating and shaking and-

_“Child!_ This is no nightmare! Stay awake! Stay focused! If you let them lull you again, you will die!”

Keris moans in horror at the mutilated, pitiful, crippled monstrosity that she sees in the mirror of her mind’s eye, but she forces herself to stay awake.  She can hear them now; gibbering and arguing and shifting around her prone body; debating whether to try to force her back into slumber now that the madness they exploited is past, or whether to simply trust in the wounds they’ve already inflicted and return to feasting. Whether to devour her quickly and have done with her in one carnivorous orgy of gluttony, or whether they can afford to risk leaving her alive to nibble slowly at her; stretching the meal out for as long as it can last.

She’s not sure what she fears more. And the worst part is this: they may be able to pick as they please. What can she do to stop them? She cannot walk, she cannot fight - her legs are gone, her hair is shorn, her left arm a ruin, her right hand a useless maimed stub that cannot hold a blade. Her healing is prodigious, but it cannot replace a missing limb - and enough of her has been cut away that she’d be helpless even should she be given time to scab her bleeding wounds over and rest.

She is helpless, and they are eating her alive.

“Do something, child! Fight back! Call upon the serpent! Call for your souls! _Act!”_

Keris closes her eyes, her gorge rising. There are pockmarks even on her face; bleeding gashes around her right orbit where one of them must have had its mouth fastened; ready to suck the eyeball out of her skull until something stopped it. Eko, perhaps - or maybe her waking.

What point is there in fighting back? She’s already lost. She’s mutilated, amputated, hollowed out and half-dead. She has nothing to fight with and nothing to lash out at. She can’t even see her enemies; hidden behind tears and blood and a swirling veil of snow where they keep their distance. If she’d woken sooner she might have been able to slaughter them all - and that’s precisely why they kept her asleep; kept the tiger these feral dogs had found from realising it was under attack, lest it destroy them all.

Even if she did win, could she ever heal from this thorough a maiming? Or would she be stuck in this helpless, disfigured body for the rest of her life - or else have to replace her limbs with brass or squirming demon-flesh or jadesteel? Any of them would make her unmistakable; easy to pick her out of any crowd no matter her face. It would be the ruin of all she’s built in Saata, of all she’s done to hide her family and keep them safe...

_“KERIS!”_ Dulmea’s voice is a scream. “Cast off their whispers from your mind! Don’t you _dare_ give up! I am your mother, and if you have ever loved me, you will do as I say and _fight!”_

In the back of Keris’s mind; green-burning grey eyes snap open, and a low hiss issues out through silver fangs. The maimed young woman takes a breath, and sinks back down. Not into dreams or illusions or memories, this time. Into herself.

They’ve taken her legs and her hair and her fingers.

But they can’t take this.

* * *

He is the Blue Star, the guiding light of progress. He is the new aeon, the summit of civilisation, the leader of the greatest people the world has ever known. When men look upon him, they are inspired. When foes hear him speak, they are brought to peace. When sages read his works, they laud his wisdom. He is rising cities and temples to the arts and writings of the new and shining age.

His flesh is the city below; his single blue eye watches from the sky. He is the king and he is the land and they are one, as all things should be. When he wishes, he descends from the heavens as a giant of a cyclopean man with sky-blue skin, who dresses like a humble monk. Extravagance would be wasted on that body. To see his glory, all one must do is look around and see what is done by his will. In his name.

He is a perfect being.

And there is a monster in his kingdom.

It came from Without, driven by madness and reeking of unholy power. Three of his brave generals fell to its blade and the awful, gibbering things that followed in its wake, along with countless subjects - bold, courageous defenders of the realm. But the horrors turned to fighting among themselves, as such fell things always do, and when the monster fled its hateful brethren he himself descended to stand before it in his magnificence and speak.

And as all things are in the light of his wisdom, it was pacified, and lay meekly before him, and put up no resistance.

But the malice of a monster is a terrible thing, and even in its docility it began to twist his kingdom around itself. He and his courtiers showed mercy; sitting by its side and soothing its tortured existence with gentle words - but it was a creature antithetical to peace. It did not _want_ a gentle existence under his wise and noble guidance. And it took what it was given and twisted it to make nightmares; eventually summoning one of the cackling beasts that had followed it to the despoiling of mighty Chir. Three more of his best and brightest had fallen to the gore-soaked wraith’s awful blade, before the monster itself had shrieked and devoured its kin-beast.

That act of cannibalism gave it the strength to rip free of his words and wardings, and now it broods and builds its power in malevolent dreams of death and carnage.

And it dreams. Oh, does it dream. Even as it lay pacified, its dreams took the perfect world he has built and contorted it to shapes he has never seen before. It built ugly streets, polluted canals, filthy apartments and sordid alleys. And though he sat and showed it peace and beauty, and though his servants have tried and tried to scrub away these stains on his glorious flesh, the font of filth and sin is never-ending and the basalt and the white stone and the hungry grey wood will not come out! They will not come out!

It will be the end of his kingdom, if he allows it time.

The filthy cocoon of matted hair, of all things, shifts. The monster has caged itself within, and the hateful light behind the strands is growing brighter. He stands and faces it, preparing himself for what will emerge. No doubt it will be terrible. Greedy and spiteful, envious and savage, full of barbaric whims and cruel urges. Oh yes, he has learned this monster’s ways well. It disgusts him to think that he offered it pity; it grieves him that he thought it could be redeemed. It is anathema to all that is free and honourable and civilised; a wretched thing of Shape and death and blight.

But he is wise, and perfect, and for all its power it is wounded and mad and forsaken. He will prevail. How can he not? He is the new age itself, and this monster is on the wrong side of history.

He will prevail. He declares it so, and none will question his word.

The cocoon gapes open, and the blasphemy that comes screaming out is worse than even he expected.

It is a heretical violation of chaos itself. It is a sickening hole in the free world beyond the burning sun. It is a moving, writhing, coiling testament to Shape, which shreds his form and denies his majesty with every inch of its skin. He can barely look at it, so horrified is he - his instincts scream at the _wrongness_ of each silver feather, of the false assertions it shrieks of what it claims as Truth; Shaping itself to be deliberately deaf and blind to the guidance of wiser men. There is no reasoning with it, no possibility of showing it the Way, no chance of bringing it to accept his glorious legend.

It has mutilated itself so utterly and solipsistically that it cannot even communicate. It is a howling voice without eyes or ears or scent or skin, denying all except itself. A living desecration.

He stumbles back, gagging, as it wrenches itself closer through the tatters of his maimed and maltreated flesh. With every movement it rips countless tiny holes in the fabric of the world around it. Every inch of it is an offence so profane and vulgar that it brings tears to his eyes. His compassion - even for such a monstrous demon - bids him imagine what it must feel like to be on the inside of such a form. To call it torture is to fall infinitely short of the indescribable suffering it must be. What depths of self-loathing, what masochistic frenzy, what suicidal, immeasurable abhorrence for itself must it feel to embrace such untold torment?

“Why?” His voice is a cracked thing; a beaten thing. “Why would you do this to yourself?”

The monster rears up over him. Its snarling hair is shorn away, it’s missing three talons and blood marks its hide in dozens of places. There’s a hollow that’s been gnawed out of its stomach and its left arm is a horrible mess of torn, mangled flesh and bone jutting through skin; a broken limb made sickeningly worse by continued use. There are bite marks everywhere across its dark skin; mouthful-shaped chunks taken out of limbs and hips and ribs...

... but none of it matters. Because the razor-feathered coils that have replaced the stumps of its legs will brook no trespass upon them, and a wheel of names forms at its back as a red-and-silver cyclone whips around it. The green brand on its head - the terrible empty circle - expands to cover its forehead and sprawl across its face and ruined scalp; a rainbow tracery of colour spreading out around it in a thousand capillaries that form a map.

It lunges, and he draws his sword and strikes. But the monster is fast - too fast, impossibly fast - and darts to the side. Its reared length twists away like the flick of a whip to avoid his blade, and it circles him in an instant, its broken arm held close, its ruined hand lashing out with its two remaining talons.

Its two remaining talons. And the mouthful of rending fangs that are revealed as it splits down the middle to close upon his wrist and _bite_. He cries out in pain, snatches his sword with his other hand and strikes again-

The monster is already out of range. Its lunge and bite was the work of a second as it sped past him, and now that dreadful razored length is circling him again, teeth bared, talons flexing. And still those awful, awful silver feathers scream their hateful song of rejection and solipsistic pain.

“I am the Blue Star!” he cries, knowing that the beast has no understanding, will not and _cannot_ listen as it should. Knowing that the disfigurement it has done to itself makes it incapable of duelling as is right and proper; of imposing its ideals and accepting those of others. It is locked and sealed in monstrous Shape, and no glamour or will can pierce that armour. But he calls to it nonetheless, as much to remind himself as to reach out in futile hope. “I am the guiding light, the way to the new era! I showed you beauty and wonder and peace! Why do this to yourself? Why choose to suffer so?”

It flashes around him, weaving in and out of the filthy things its abhorrent soul has written large across his landscape; the basalt and brass and blood-stained wood. Its circles are growing smaller. It is closing in.

He prepares himself for the clash.

In that single heartbeat of inner peace, it moves like a lightning bolt. It is behind him at once in a blinding flash of light and sound and force.Those terrible feathered coils lash out and around his perfect form, and he screams as they draw blood from a thousand lancing cuts, and it draws him up in a grip so strong that it breaks his bones, and looks him in the eye. And answers him.

_“I’d rather live in my world,”_ the Devil-Serpent hisses through a mouth full of broken fangs, _“than let you kill me in yoursss.”_

The glow from her brow surges out to form an arcane map on the ground around her, which pulses three times as the blue light above them flares.

Then it surges out again, and rainbow light engulfs the world.

* * *

Hissing and laughing and singing and screaming, the light sinks ten thousand ephemeral teeth into the world and chews it up at the speed of thought.

The blue star no longer shines down on the city of Chir. They have sung and they have built and the scars of the demonic attack are healing over. But there is now a rainbow in the sky; a rainbow with too many colours, a rainbow that expands and expands.

It reaches down, and burns away the sky-scraping towers. They are torn down, and nothing remains. The beetle-armoured soldiers in their white armour are reduced to mute pillars of white stone. Where they stood at guard, there are now stone circles standing on rolling fields.

The wasps try to outfly the expanding light. One escapes - and only one. Every other great buzzing machines is enveloped, and when it passes over them it leaves nothing of what they once were remaining. One, still on the ground, tears itself apart into clouds of insects. Another in the air holds its form for a moment, but only a moment - because now it is nothing but a form half-seen in a curiously shaped patch of mist. Others become clouds of birds, flocks of sheep and goats, jutting outcrops of rock in the river.

The waist-high grass outside the city shrinks and is subsumed, changing in colour. The rabbit-eared woman on her brass insect-machine sees the waves of light and flinches as it washes over her. She screams, raising one hand to try to fend it off - but her hand turns to pale wood. Her brass machine twists and tarnishes. When the light passes, there is only a sprouting tree, hints of corroded metal visible through its roots.

In the end, _he_ survives. He was the strongest. He still is, though that is because everything else has succumbed to the choking power that crushes hearts to stone. His legs are useless black basalt, dragging behind him. One arm has broken away at the shoulder, and he drags himself along with the bitten-off stump of the other.

He whispers his title to himself again and again, clinging onto what he chooses to be, rather than what others wish for him to be.

“I am the Blue Star, the guiding light of progress. I am the new aeon. When others see me, they are inspired. I… I am rising cities and I am… I am! I am not stone! I am… the Blue Star, the guiding light of progress!”

There is a girl in front of him. Young; perhaps five or six. Her eyes burn every colour of the rainbow; her skin is darker than the darkest night. Her hair waves around her, like she is underwater.

She stinks of the _awful_ things that are happening around him. She not human. She is not of chaos. She is a creature of the horrors that are consuming his land and his subjects. Even where she stands, the stone becomes things other than it was - but it is not chaos! It is will!

“I am not like you-” he begins.

And she kicks him in the face so hard he loses track of what he was saying.

The girl squats, grabs his head in both hands and with her hair, and slams it into the ground again. And only when he is quite decidedly stunned does she unhinge her jaw and swallow him whole.

She wipes her mouth on the back of her arm, and then she is not a girl. She is a many-part dragon, who comes apart into a cloud of ink and flesh as she returns home.

After all. Her mother needs her.


	14. Chapter 14

It has been over seven hundred years since sunlight has shone on these fields.

Except that is not true, not really. For these fields have not existed, have not been real before this moment. Just as the Primordials wrought the world, so too have these fields been wrought from madness, given form and shape. So perhaps the sun that rises over the steep mountain valley shines on it for the first time.

It reveals a landscape whose slopes have ice on the uppermost reaches, whose walls are basalt and other igneous rocks, where bamboo grows wild and lavishly green and where many-coloured flowers blossom down towards the winding river.

Keris Dulmeadokht lies upon the slopes, exhausted nearly to the point of death, and gasps with pain. She is a crippled, pitiful thing; stone and metal streaked with mercury covering her stumps; wounded and scarred; her scalp a patchy mess of scabs.

But she is alive. And around her in a circle stands a rough ring of rocks, standing stones silenced by her swift shaping of this verdant valley.

“I-” she croaks. Her voice is raw, and she hacks up blood and phlegm, rolling her useless body over to clear her airways. She can’t stand. She can barely drag the lump of her torso over to a rock with her maimed hand, her twisted and splintered left trailing uselessly at her side. The agony of it brings further tears, and she has to curl her head down and her shoulders in for a minute or two until she has enough control over herself to try again.

“Iris,” she chokes out. This time speech works, though it’s hoarse from screams.

Iris is not here. No one is. Keris is alone. Alone apart from the voices in her head. Left to suffer.

* * *

She is not sure how long she waits before she realises there are black wings overhead, spiralling in the morning light. Black feathers, still tinged with pink where the light shines through them.

“Cal,” she calls, before another fit of coughing interrupts her. “Cal’so!”

The wings descend, and settle. In the glare, Keris sees two dark shapes upon the grass.

Wait. Two?

The little girl who’s so dark she’s a hole in the world - apart from her burning, many-coloured eyes - points imperiously at the fallen woman and exhales a puff of flame that’s shaped like an arrow.

The larger one - wrapped up in her veils and her wings rushes over to her mother. “Oh, mama,” Calesco sobs, visibly weeping behind her veils, wrapping her feathers around Keris and pressing her warmth up against her.

Keris keens as the motion jostles her left arm, and Calesco flinches away. Keris beckons her back at a better angle, trying not to look at herself.

“S’not as bad as it looks,” she whispers hoarsely. “I think. Hope.” Despite herself, her eyes stray to her left, and she shudders a little. “Hard t’be worse,” she has to admit.

The girl - Iris? - plonks herself down onto the long grass next to Keris’s left side. From her expression and the worried-faces she exhales, she’s very unhappy about what state Keris is in. Actually, given the arm exhalations, she might be worried particularly about the left arm.

Calesco is beside herself, hugging Keris close and rocking her in her wings.

“I know,” Keris tells Iris. “I know, I know. M’sorry.” She can’t provide any reassurance there, no matter how much she’d like to, and turns her attention to stroking Calesco’s hair with the two fingers she has left.

“Calesco?” she prompts, then more firmly. “Calesco. Look at me. Deep breaths. Slow down.”

“It’s bee’ days and we tried to get in but they mazed us they stopped fighting-fightin’ and we couldn’t find you because they weren’t playing the same game and-and-and-”

“Calesco...” Keris lets her head fall back on the rock and squeezes her eyes shut. She _hurts_. The throbbing of her bones, the stinging brands all over her skin from the bites taken out of her, the horrible gaping empty ache at her thighs and fingers - and of course the piercing stabs of agony from her mangled left arm. She has to breathe deeply for a moment and force it back again before she can summon up enough willpower to snap her daughter out of it.

_“Calesco,”_ she orders - and it is an order this time, with as much force as she can put behind it given her flagging strength. “I’m hurt and exhausted, I need... I need you to help me.” She pauses to take another few breaths and build up her strength for speech again. “I can’t... I don’t have the strength to help you here. You have to be the protector this time.”

((Invoking Calesco’s Compassion and the “help” clause of her TLA-love to get her to pull herself together, because Keris literally can’t be a parent and help her through a panic attack right now; she’s too injured and running on empty.))

Iris springs to her feet, and stomps around to behind Calesco, wrapping her arms around her neck and giving her kisses on the top of her veiled head. Calesco takes a deep shuddering breath. “I didn’t mean any of this. Not _this_ ,” she says weakly, letting go of Keris a little bit - which is a relief in its own right as she’s no longer putting pressure on her scars. “Uh. No one else got hurt. Um. Not much, at least. But what happened to Eko? She ran in there and never came out? Where is she?”

There’s a note of hysteria rising in Calesco’s voice again.

Someone silently stomps their foot in Keris’s head. Tell her darling baby sister that Eko is fine, Eko instructs.

“Eko?” It’s an effort to think back to the dreams. “Oh. Oh, right.” Things resolve themselves in her memory. “Yes, she’s fine. She reached me. She killed... two? No, three of the powerful ones. And a bunch of lesser ones. I still thought I was... was Kit.”

Keris has to pause for breath, and gives Iris’s hair a stroke as well. She doesn’t have the energy to say it, but her little familiar - not so little any more - really came through for her in this ordeal. Without her clever, brave, resourceful little dragon-daughter, Keris would probably be dead.

She hopes some of that comes through in her weak caress. Iris breathes out a hugging picture, so maybe it does.

“I ran away,” she goes on. “She chased me. She killed the... the one telling the story, from behind the scenes. In the walls. It was lying to me, telling me what to remember... she gutted it. But then I panicked and pulled her back inside while she was trying to slap me awake.”

Another break for panting. “You said... days? Where is everyone? Else. Besides you an’ Eko.”

“Um. Um. Back down in the... the c-camp. I just... we saw the light. It was like... uh, like a sky fire. But in the valley. Like it was on fire, only with fire like Iris’s eyes.”

Iris makes a happy puff to demonstrate, which splits apart into a small figure with pointy ears and a bigger dragon who eats them.

“Vali is... um, a mess, and Zana and Nara have been fighting a lot and that’s _weird_ and Rathan’s been riding herd on Asarin and... uh, it’s been bad,” Calesco says in a tiny voice.

Keris nods fractionally. That’s definitely going to be bad. But it’s a problem for her to deal with later, and she doesn’t have the energy to look forward to it now. She unhooks her arm from around Calesco and tilts her chin to look her in the eye, remembering again and hating in an instant that her beautiful hair is gone, and she can’t do both at once.

“What you said,” she says quietly. “Before.”

Calesco cringes back, wings wrapping in on herself. She awaits judgement.

Her mother sighs. “We’ll talk about punishment. Later, when I have the energy. I know you need it, even if you didn’t mean for... this.” She doesn’t gesture at her ruined body. She doesn’t need to. Calesco flinches anyway.

“But you were... you weren’t entirely wrong. I was forgetting - ignoring - bits of my past. People from my past who... who didn’t deserve to be forgotten.”

Calesco nods. “I... I knew about them. All of them. Not from the start, not all of it.” She lets out a choked sob. “From... from when Kuha betrayed me. Then I knew everything. About how you and...” she makes a complicated hand gesture that’s nearly Ekoese in its implications of sex, “... always wound up with hurting. And death.” She snivels. “Poor Gull.”

“I never got to say goodbye to her,” Keris says sadly. “That last day. They gave me one. S’how they got me under. But it wasn’t real.”

She shifts her arm back around Calesco and hugs her.

“M’sorry you had to know that stuff. All that stuff. S’not what I wanted for you - for any of you. I wanted my children to have happy childhoods. Not like mine was.”

“I tried to fight being your daughter,” Calesco mumbles into her. “Right at the start. Think that’s why more... more stuff gets through.”

Keris nods tiredly, and spends another few minutes leaning her head back on the rock, stroking Calesco’s hair and squeezing Iris’s little hand when her fingers delicately grasp Keris’s remaining two. Calesco says nothing to fill the silence, just burrowing her face into Keris’s chest and clinging to her. It’s warm in the blanket of feathers, which is nice.

“You and I need to talk, I think.” Keris says eventually. “A lot more than we do now, where you yell when I do something mean and I ignore you when my job comes calling.” She lets out a tired huff of painful laughter. “M’not the best at this parent thing. But I’ll try harder. We can try being friends as well as mother and daughter.”

“Mmm,” Calesco mumbles into her. “Um. So. When I was flying over...”

Iris provides a rapid succession of flame pictures, including houses, plants, trees, and little people.

“... you made this. This whole place. It. Um. It looks sort of like the area around Baisha. Sort of. But there’s some Nexus and Saata in the buildings. There are... there are towns, y’know. On the river.”

“Huh,” Keris huffs. She takes another moment to think about that.

“People?” she asks, quirking an eyebrow at Iris. “They’re inhabited? Who by?”

Iris exhales a person shape again. She is very helpful.

(IRIS MVP)

“I didn’t see up close,” Calesco says eventually, after wiping her eyes. “I was looking for you and she,” she nods at Iris, “was pulling my hair to steer me.”

Iris nods vigorously at that.

“Good girl for getting help,” Keris praises Iris. “You helped mama eat the nasty wyld zone and then went and got your big sister to help, didn’t you? Just like you tried to wake me up inside and got your other big sister to break me out. Come here, sweetheart.”

Iris leans forward with a smile, and Keris grunts as she leans up to plant a proud kiss on her forehead.

“Good girl,” she repeats. _“Clever_ girl. Brave girl. I’m so proud of you. You were amazing.”

Iris beams, and lavishes kisses on Keris’s face, stroking her with her midnight black hair.

“Okay,” Keris breathes. “Calesco? Do you think you can get me down to camp? I’m... not in much shape to move by myself. Not without becoming the wind or the serpent, and I don’t... I don’t think I have much strength left inside for either of those.”

She leaps to obey, but realises quickly Keris can’t cling on and it’s hard to fly without something to help carry her. Looking around, she eventually settles on the use of her sash as a great red sling she can wrap Keris up in.

It’s not the most graceful way to be carried, but it works, and with Iris sinking into Keris as tattoo again, Calesco carries her back to the fortified camp near the collapsed tunnel. No, correction, back to the hot springs, Keris realises.

Of course, as soon as Calesco arrives, there’s a clamour of voices.

“You found her!”

“Mama mama mama!”

“What happened to her!”

“She’s hurt!”

Keris’s voice isn’t enough to cut through the yelling and panic, and neither is her whistle. Eventually it’s Iris who silences the camp, by leaping off her pitted and pockmarked scalp to take her little-girl form again and exhale a plume of varicoloured fire over the gathered demon lords.

“I’m not okay,” Keris says into the ensuing silence. “But I’m alive, and all of them are dead. They caught me in illusions and... well, you can see.”

There’s more to say, more to be done - decisions to make, orders to give, reassurances to dole out. But she doesn’t have the stamina. She sags into Calesco and closes her eyes, breathing tightly against the pain. She still hasn’t thought about her left arm. She is _determinedly not_ thinking about it, despite all her medical training screaming at her.

She can deal with things in... in a bit. Yeah. In a bit. When she doesn’t feel so awful. That won’t be long. Right?

For the next few hours, everywhere, it is Rathan in charge. He’s the one who orders Vali to go fetch all kinds of small things for Keris, who drags Zanara out of the way from where they’re staring and who’s there to arrange things and command Asarin’s servants.

From her position on the bed they put her in, he sounds - and looks - so much like Rat to Keris. She gets a little sniffly over it - which of course is taken entirely the wrong way by everyone, especially Calesco, who has flatly refused to leave Keris’s side since finding her. Her weak protests that she’s not crying in pain aren’t loud enough, and the hubbub begins to start up again, only for Rathan to bring it to a close. His clap echoes unnaturally loudly through the arguing voices.

“Everyone stop shouting,” he commands, standing to his full height. Like Ney, he tends to slouch - and like Ney, he’s surprisingly tall when he straightens up; crowned by his six-tined antlers and his waterfall of red-blonde hair.

“Mama’s hurt, Eko’s gone and Hanny’s... recuperating,” he says in firm tones. “So I’m taking official command as the eldest left.”

“You can’t just-” starts Zanara, and Rathan turns to them wordlessly. Red and silver light swells around him, and for a moment the sorcerous weight of the deep ocean presses down on the hot springs. Silver glints in the deepest parts of the pools, and the eerie songs of orca can be heard on hidden currents beneath the surface as the moonlight above tints crimson.

Zanara stops talking.

“We’re going back to Hell,” Rathan declares. “Calesco, you stay here and cover for mama as Little River. Take that as part of your debt to her for starting this - you act as Little River _perfectly_ , however much you dislike it. You know the role. Seresa can fill in for her as Cinnamon. Oulie, you need to stay too. Hell isn’t safe for you as a sorceress, and you need to be here when Hermione gets back.”

He turns to the louder voices. “Vali, you’re coming with us to protect mama. Zanara, you’re coming with us on your _absolute best behaviour_ , or I’ll tell Lady Lilunu why mama got hurt so badly. Kuha, you too - mama will need help getting around.”

The last raised voice - and one of the loudest - is Asarin. “My lady,” he says to her. “You’re not part of the family, so I can’t give you orders. Your presence would be appreciated for the crossing of the Desert, or if you want to remain in Creation we’d be grateful for your help in overseeing the Bloody Lionesses and helping Ellyssivera protect Hanny’s holdings. All of us,” he gestures at the group, “need to keep this from hurting mama’s assets or directorship position. We need to make sure she doesn’t lose anything in the southwest while she’s recovering, and keep her injuries as secret as possible from everyone but Lady Lilunu.”

There’s a pause. “And, um,” he adds awkwardly. “Speaking of Lady Lilunu. Mama? Didn’t you leave your painting with her last time we were in Hell?”

The way Keris’s face goes slack with dread is answer enough.

“What are you talking about?” asks Asarin.

“I... Lilunu made me a painting,” Keris whispers. “A portrait. It’s part of me. It always looks like I do. If I get tattoos or change my face, it changes with me. If Lilunu checks it...”

She looks around, eyes wide. “How... how long has it been? Calesco said ‘days’.”

“Six days,” Rathan says promptly, and the curse that leaves Keris’s lips blackens the air. Adrenaline and terror provides a burst of energy to replace what exhaustion has robbed. Six days means Lilunu is already watching her being... being _eaten alive_. Will be watching it for another five days with no word on whether or not she’s survived.

Five days is a long time for a terrified demon princess to break things.

“Iris, baby,” Keris blurts as fast as she can get the words out. “I need you to go back to Hell ahead of us, okay? I know it’ll be a long trip, but you need to go reassure your mama that I’m alive, and that I’m coming back to recover. You need to stay with her and keep her calm, alright? And... and don’t try to pull off any of her chakra knots without me there, but see if you can help her with them as much as you can, because I bet this will cause some. Will you do that for me, sweetie? Can you be brave and grown-up and clever again?”

Iris squares up to Keris, little jaw stubborn, and exhales a figure missing limbs, a dragon coiled around it, and a pair of crossed arms.

“I know, sweetie,” Keris soothes. “But Calesco and Rathan and Vali and everyone are here to look after me. But Lilunu’s all alone, and she’ll be really scared and sad and wound up inside. She’s not got anyone to look after her and let her know I’m fine.”

Thumb in her mouth, Iris looks torn. It reminds Keris that she really is very young - but has needed to be very mature for the past few days. She wants to be around Keris - she doesn’t want a lonely five day trip all alone. Keris grimaces, but she needs to contact Lilunu, and she’s not willing to risk trying to step into her painting right now. Not when it might leave her comatose for ten days or more.

“I need to tell her I’m okay, sweetheart,” she says helplessly. “Come here and give me a cuddle. Can you think of a way to let her know without going yourself?”

Iris darts into Keris’s arms, slipping onto her skin and circling her torso over and over before coiling up on her breasts with her head in the hollow of Keris’s throat. She seems to think for a moment before raising her head up and hesitantly exhaling a fire-shaped breath of fire surrounding a pair of lips alongside a question mark.

“You think I could just send a piece of your fire with a message instead of all of you?” Keris checks. Iris nods.

“Okay then. Then **_breathe out, and let your flame carry these words across the Desert to Lilunu_** ,” says Keris, grimacing briefly before expending most of her remaining strength in Sorcery. “Teacher. It is Keris. I am alive - though not uninjured, as you may have seen. If you have not, I beg of you not to check my painting before I see you again. I will be returning to Hell as soon as I can to recover and make my report - but I promise, I am safe now and intend to stay that way.” She pauses, looking at Iris where she’s risen almost entirely off her chest; wings spread and rainbow light filling all the cracks between her black scales.

“Please try not to worry,” she finishes, breathless with exertion. “I’m sorry for scaring you so.”

Iris’s mouth opens; the light within so bright it’s almost blinding, and Keris nods weakly. “ ** _Let it be sent_** ,” she whispers, and the light filling the little dragon pours out in a torrent of crackling fire that shoots away like a comet, off into the distance and the nearest gate to Cecelyne.

Keris slumps back and shakily hugs the little girl the dragon shifts to as she folds herself back down, kissing her forehead.

“There,” she whispers. “Clever girl. Now you can guard me until we see her again.”

Iris bursts into glistening, many-coloured tears, as if now she has permission to cry.

Keris can hear Rathan getting on with organising people in the background as she strokes Iris’s hair as best she can and quietly praises her, kisses her forehead, lets her become a tattoo and nose at Keris’s mangled arm in distress. There’s Calesco to look after, too, and an apologetic, shame-faced Zana who makes muttered apologies before running off for another fight with Nara, who seems to be avoiding her. Vali is almost as distraught as Calesco, and she’s so _tired_... with all of that to deal with, she doesn’t even manage to overhear whether Asarin is staying in Creation or coming with them.

It’s not her task to deal with, though, and that fact is a great weight off her shoulders. Keris dispenses what comfort she can, takes the pain-dampening draughts that Oula feeds her, and sleeps.

* * *

Even her inner world is not whole. It has been scourged, scarred, and there are gaping holes in the landscape.

And neither is she whole, either. But at least there is the memory of wholeness, and ribbon-and-wind hands greet her as she picks herself up off the white sand of an Isles-beach.

“Eko,” she breathes, falling forward into the frilly dress and jade mask. She still hurts in here, though it’s more the aching memory of pain than the sharp reality. “You saved me. Thank you.”

Eko strokes Keris’s ribbon hair, and hugs her tight. She’s there to cut away the things that were holding mama back, she indicates as she pats Keris’s cheek. But they were taking too much from her. Things she needed. Also flesh and organs and stuff and junk.

And, Eko adds fervently, Iris is just the bravest and the cutest little baby sister who’s so strong and so brave and it’s a good thing she can get in here too so Eko can give her all the hugs she needs for showing Eko who to stab.

“Yes,” Keris agrees. “She was perfect. I owe her so, so many rewards.” She sniffs, and relaxes into the hug for a while until something occurs to her.

“I don’t think I’ve seen her in here before, though,” she says. “I mean, I’m not saying I don’t believe you, but how do you know she can get in? Has she done it before when I wasn’t paying attention?”

Eko shrugs. Well, she indicates, pointing over at the fogwards horizon, there is that big spoopy pretty black egg that bleeds ink embedded in the top of a hill made of opals. And those funny cute moving pictures that live around it.

There’s a longish pause.

Then... 

_“What?”_

Mama, Eko indicates with a sad shake of her head, have you not been paying attention to stuff again? She pauses. Unless it wasn’t here until a while ago and Eko forgot. A lot of stuff and junk has happened since the chaos monsters started eating the world. It was very distracting. Also, Eko got distracted by something in the Swamp, which... she frowns. Drat, she gestures. It was adorable, but she’s forgotten what it was. But a lot of little cakes made of honey and sugared fruits were involved.

“Show me the egg thing,” Keris says, getting to her... her wind-feet. She looks down at the gently circulating red breezes in the shape of limbs where her calves, shins and thighs should be, and shivers. “Th-then... then we’ll go see if we can find your little cakes in the Swamp.”

Yaaay, Eko motions as she dances off across the gently lapping waves. Though even this is disturbed, and scars and sediment have been kicked up by the damage to the sea bed.

There is something... reassuring about Keris’s soul and the keruby within it, Keris sometimes feels. Some kind of Nexan - and Saatan, too - good sense. For example, lesser beings would be concerned by a giant egg on top of a hill made entirely of opal. By contrast, there’s a number of keruby already there, key among them an orven with her own ramsquid, an eyepatch, and a satchel that she’s filling with gemstones the other keruby chip off the beach. She must be close to maturing - she looks like she’s on the edge of puberty.

((The Nexan spirit - “can we profit off this?”))

Keris hasn’t actually spent much time among clay-keruby. They’re dreamy little things, she knows - both critics and consumers of art who reshape their malleable bodies in the same way as their patron. There are certainly a lot of gasps at her patchwork, half-wind-half-flesh state, and more than a few of them start sketching her on the spot.

They’re also a lot more peaceful than any other breed but mezkeruby, or so it seems. Were this a collection of szels or sziroms - or even more orvens than the scattered few that are here - there would be scuffles and rivalries and factions all staking out ground on the hill, even if they weren’t actually fighting. By contrast, all the agyas seem to more or less get along; negotiating and trading with each other when they come into conflict. They’re even keeping the peace among the other breeds who’ve wound up here.

Pausing to allow them the chance to get their sketches finished, Keris beckons the tall orven with the eyepatch over and asks if she’s the one in charge here.

“Pfft. Of course,” she says. She considers her position, Keris’s position, and the fact that Princess Eko has jogged over to start gesture-gossiping with a szel. “Your highness. But I’m in charge. I found this island so I named it. It’s called Yaleenia,” she adds, just to make sure the creator of the world knows its name.

“How long has it been here?” Keris wants to know. “When did you find it?”

“About...” She considers it. “Two days. Give or take. But I was in the area so I found it when it emerged from the sea and so now it’s mine.”

“Hmm.” Keris looks up the hill at the great black egg that’s leaking ink. Her eyes flash green.

The hill itself is... well, not much of a hill, but still, in the Isles everything is fairly flat. The egg itself is the size of a small house, and it’s the same night black as Iris - like a hole cut into the world. It’s embedded in the peak - but the opals around it are cracked and shattered, like it’s smashed up through the gems. That impact seems to be where the bleeding ink is coming from, which is polluting the waters around this island.

“I have a feeling I know someone who might disagree with that,” Keris murmurs. She’s getting the same reading off the egg as she gets off Iris - nothing whatsoever, save the reflection of her own power. And that’s telling, because _only_ Iris is threaded into her very flesh and blood enough to be hidden by the shadow of her essence like that. This is undoubtedly the manifestation of her little dragon-daughter inside her soul - a manifestation that must have been planted back when Lilunu first tattooed her, hidden in a nest of opal under the seabed.

Beckoning for Yaleena to follow her, Keris climbs up the hill until she reaches the egg, stepping around the flowing streams of ink so as not to get it in her wind-feet. She lays the wind-memory of her left arm on the egg’s surface, and whistles softly.

“Iris?” she calls, low and affectionate. “Can you hear me, sweetheart? Can you come in through here?” She pauses, considering. It is an egg, after all. “Or out?”

The egg doesn’t move. Doesn’t respond.

But the bleeding ink surges up, and becomes the girl once again.

“Hello, sweetheart,” Keris says, ruffling her hair. “That was quick. How long have you been able to do that?”

Iris blinks. She looks imploringly at Eko.

Eko considers this, nods, and imparts to Keris she’s pretty sure Iris just worked out she can do this.

“Clever girl,” Keris compliments her. “Well then, introductions. Yaleena, this is Iris. She’s my youngest daughter-of-the-soul, and she’s also the daughter of Lady Lilunu - my mentor, who also taught Duchess Oula.”

From Yaleena’s expression, she definitely knows Oula. Keris is entirely unsurprised.

“This is her egg,” Keris says, “so she might take issue with your name for the island. But on the other hand...”

She turns to Iris. “Iris, sweetheart? This is Yaleena. She’s a brave orvenkerub who found your egg when it surfaced and brought all these keruby here to protect it while you were being brave and protecting me.” It’s stretching the truth a little - Keris doubts ‘protecting’ was what Yaleena had in mind - but orvenkeruby are driven by the urge to seek out justice and do heroic deeds, and she can see Yaleena straightening with pride at the implied praise.

“Do you want her to be your regent in here while you’re helping me outside, and do the talking-to-people stuff?” Keris asks, as Iris cocks her head and considers the taller girl with the waterfall-cape and the two-spined seashell helmet.

Iris considers it, dances over, grabs Yaleena by the head with her hair, and pulls her down to contemplatively give her a kiss on the brow.

She turns back to Keris, nods, and then steals Yaleena’s eyepatch - revealing the empty socket below. The kerub curses in Rivertongue and goes to grab the girl. But Iris presses her hand into her face and when she steps back with a yelp, there’s a rainbow flame burning there.

With a nod, Iris seems to consider herself satisfied, and exhales flame shaped like a dragon curled around an orvenkerub.

“What did she do?” Yaleena demands. “I... I can see out of that eye!”

Iris, for her part, has put on the eyepatch and seems to consider it an equitable trade.

Keris opens her mouth, closes her mouth, then scoops up a double-handful of ink, transmuting it into Rathanite mercury and offering it to her in her cupped palms as a mirror. Somehow, it doesn’t fall through her wind-hand, which Keris doesn’t understand but chooses not to question.

“I think that means ‘yes’,” she says. “Congratulations, Regent Yaleena. This makes you a... Marchioness? Let’s go with Marchioness.”

“A title? Of my own!” Yaleena’s eyes - both the normal one and the flame - light up with glee. “Ha! That’ll show that idiot!”

Smiling down on her, Keris sighs happily. She feels... better. Actually, she feels great. If the long, awful torment of the illusion-world accomplished anything good, it was to lift the weight off her shoulders and dispel the tension that had wound around her throat these past few months - or seasons. Her body may ache and her heart may hurt, but her mind is clearer than it has been in what feels like years.

And keruby always seem to cheer her up when she spends time around them.

“Alright then. I’ll leave you and Iris to sort out how you’re going to manage the island and protect her egg,” she says. “Eko? Let’s go visit the Swamp and... and see if we can find Haneyl while we’re there.” She bites her lip, unsure of what she hopes to find.

As she leaves, Iris has already clearly decided their relationship and power dynamics. Which is to say, Yaleena is giving her a piggyback.

* * *

Baby sisters are adorable, Eko wisely imparts to Keris as they speed towards the Swamp. The Swamp seems to have burned recently, though of course it’s hard to tell - the Islewards coast is always the most fire dominated, and flames dance atop the mats of vegetation and gleam on riverbeds.

“You’re getting more and more of them, aren’t you?” Keris asks. “First it was just Haneyl, then Calesco and Zana as well, the-”

She stutters, and almost falls as she comes to a halt. “The twins,” she whispers. “Kali and Ogin! Atiya! Aiko! I didn’t... I didn’t _think!_ I didn’t think of them! I- I mean, I thought of them, but only for a moment, then I realised they must be Evedelyl and just...”

She turns a paling face to Eko. “I didn’t even see them,” she whispers. “Why didn’t I see them? I should’ve... I would’ve insisted on it, before. I know I would! I’d’ve _needed_ to! To- to check they were okay for myself, e-even if I knew it!”

Well, big grandma’s been looking after them, Eko explains flippantly.

“Yeah, but...” Keris gulps. “I-is this what you meant? About... about _them_ taking things I needed?”

She checks, in a sudden fit of worry. Closes her eyes and pictures Kali’s excitable pouncing around on things, Ogin’s slow and beaming smile, Atiya’s grave consideration of spoons at the dinner table, Aiko’s shy confessions at bathtime. The love swells up from deep within her, strong and sweet and true. She breathes a sigh of relief. _That_ , at least, they couldn’t touch.

But the care and attention to checking on them; the anxious worry of what they might be doing when unwatched, the little voice in that back of Keris’s mind that says how small and defenceless her babies are and how they need to be protected...

... that, the Blue Star chewed right out of her and swallowed.

That, and how much else?

Eko nods, and reaches out to hold her mother’s hand as they run through the flower-rich glades. Keris follows, quiet and concerned.

Which is why she trips again when they stumble over their destination, and plants herself bruised-face-first at the foot of a bush at the edge of the clearing around Haneyl’s tree. Coughing and spitting mud, she yanks her head back up to look again at the scene spread out beneath the broad branches.

She discovers that they are not mourning here. They are not sad. There is no fear for their lost princess.

What there is instead is a party. There are many, many keruby here, and immaculate doll-automata with burning eyes act out a grand play for a cheering crowd. There is food - lots and lots of food. And, at the centre of it all, sitting on several cushions on a throne intended for a young woman, is a little girl.

A pale little girl, with grey hair.

A pale little girl with grey hair and bright green eyes and food stains around her mouth, watching the play with rapt attention.

And the adult keruby in the area are waiting on her, and she is quite obviously revelling in the attention. And in getting to tell the big people what to do.

_“Haneyl,”_ Keris breathes, tears slipping down her face. She picks herself up, absently wipes the mud from her face, steps forward into the clearing - all without breaking her gaze. She only starts thinking past that one word when she reaches the girl and falls to her knees beside her; the crowd having parted to let her through.

The little girl - she looks Iris’s age or maybe even younger, younger than Haneyl has _ever_ been - beams down at Keris. “Mama!” she says. “Look! All the nice people made me a party! And... you’re back, Eko. I made more...”

She realises that Eko has already gravitated to the sweet things.

“Fine!” she huffs. “I didn’t want to talk at you anyway!”

Keris hugs her. There’s not really any thought or choice involved in the decision; she’s just staring one moment and hugging the next. When Haneyl starts squirming to get loose, she lets go and draws back a little, but keeps Haneyl’s little hands in hers.

“It’s so good to see you, sweetheart,” Keris sniffs. “I’m really sorry.”

The next words are like ice water down her neck. “What happened, mama? I... I sprouted. But I’m remembering... other things.” She raises one small hand. “I don’t think I was always this small. Or pale. And I think you used to have meat arms.”

She freezes. Looks up at the little girl, who isn’t acting like the Haneyl she’d gone to Chir with, or even the Haneyl who she and Zanyi had gone out to coffeehouses in Saata with.

She doesn’t remember.

... but she also does, from what she says. That, and that alone, lets Keris press the fear down deep.

“You- you got hurt,” she says at last. “So you’re regrowing from the roots like a tree that’s fallen down. That’s where those other memories are from. Soon you’ll be just as big and pretty as you ever were. But for now,” she scoops Haneyl into her arms, “you’re my perfect little princess. And you’re safe here. I promise.”

Yeah, so, Eko gestures, stuffing three tiny pink-and-green cupcakes into her mouth at once, the fat Haneyl is made up of a tripartite of conflated polythematic clusters based around her composite big brother and big brother-sister plus her origin as Keris’s possessiveness and greed filtered through her family-idealisation of her stuff with Sasi plus also being mama when she was on the streets that Eko had to listen to and Zana and Nara killed the big scary Haneyl-dragon so that’s fire and hunger crippled so Haneyl is locked in a metastable holding pattern as a weakened little adorable baby sister who’s all fragile and can’t go outside. That body is an immature fruit that can’t hold all of fat Haneyl, and anyway most of Haneyl is still regrowing so this is just for cooking and having fun until she’s better.

Probably. Or stuff.

Most of that seems to have flown past Haneyl’s - adorable and somewhat tousled - head. But something did register. “Zanara...” she hisses, teeth lengthening, hair catching ablaze, muscles straining...

... and then she faints.

Yeah, that, Eko gestures. That’s going to happen if she tries to be anything other than a smol ickle human fruit.

Keris makes a distressed sound and hugs the limp little shape, looking around at the gathered keruby. “Who’s in charge here?” she calls. “You’ve all been looking after her, but I bet there’s only a few who’ve been smoothing things over and acting as her administrators.”

“I’m in charge as head artiste!” Saji calls out from the stage, pausing in her play.

A violet-skinned young man with white hair smoothly steps in, smiling with many teeth showing. “And while of course, Lady Saji is most definitely in charge, I handle all the boring things not worthy of her time,” he purrs. “Baron Chayo, your eternal majesty.”

Keris nods. “Has this happened before? How often has she been remembering? How _much_ does she remember? She’s younger than I’ve ever seen her before.”

“It hasn’t been very long, but particularly it occurs when she gets angry,” Chayo says, hands folded behind his back. “She is, unfortunately, frail.” He glances at her and makes sure she’s still unconscious. “And normally, of course, she’s used to burning through her fat whenever anything gets in her way, but she’s small and slim and always hungry. We’ve been feeding her as much as we can because she gets tetchy whenever she gets low blood sugar.”

“Which is why you’re putting on plays for her; so she stays happy and sits still and doesn’t use up her energy reserves,” Keris realises. “And encouraging her to have fun ordering the big people around, and keeping her away from anything she can’t do so she doesn’t try to burn fat, right?”

He nods. “Precisely, your majesty.” He smiles, showing his many teeth. “The princess has always needed to be entertained. And fed. Your majesty, while obviously Princess Eko is just as high maintenance...”

She heard that, fangface, Eko gestures as she starts eating tiny sausages on sticks after dipping them in the honey.

“... are the other royals just as demanding?”

Keris considers Zanara’s constant need for attention. And Rathan’s court, all of whom love and idolise him. And Vali’s infinite list of projects he wants to do, most of which involve blowing up bits of the Spires that people are often trying to use. And Calesco’s strict list of laws that she mandates all who live in the Meadows must follow.

“... not all of them?” she hazards. It’s not technically a lie. Dulmea is fairly relaxed. Ish. Most of the time.

Speaking of which, she really needs to go and visit her mama. She owes her as many thanks as Iris and Eko.

“Well, given the princess is once again tired, we’ll put her to bed.” Chayo looks Keris up and down - admiringly. “Do you wish to stay for the afterparty of the elder keruby, your majesty?” he purrs. “We’ll get away from the children - so we can have music - and other forms of adult fun.”

Eko’s mask’s look of outright horror is a thing to behold.

“... I think Princess Eko and I will be going to the City,” Keris says. “Do tell Princess Haneyl that I’ll be coming back to visit, when she wakes up. I’ll see if I can bring some presents for her, too.”

“She will like that,” Chayo says.

Eko’s silence as they head towards the centre of the world speaks _volumes_.

* * *

Dulmea is waiting for them at the edge of the Outer City. Either she got word from the lookouts atop the wall, or she simply guessed Keris would come and has a Chord at every gate. Keris doesn’t know and doesn’t care; she runs right up to her mother and folds herself into her embrace, babbling gratitude and apologies.

Well, Eko gestures, she brought Keris to grandmother for a talk, so does that mean...

Dulmea sighs. “Go to the Ruinwards side of the city and you can have it back.”

Eko vanishes.

Dulmea seats Keris down in one of the City’s teahouses - next to where a scar has torn away a block and left it flooded - and pours a strong brew out. “What a sad, unhappy few days we just had,” she says, once they’ve both drank.

“Six days.” The words leave Keris in a disbelieving whoosh of air, and she shakes her head. Not in disbelief, but in helplessness; that so short a time could change things so completely. Her eyes stray once more to her arm and legs of wind.

“How much did you see?” she murmurs after about half a cup. “I know... I know you were there after Eko. When it started over from the beginning, with me telling the story. You were the one who prompted me, after Eko gutted the illusionist. Stopped me from just getting lost, or going back under _their_ lies.”

“You couldn’t hear me at first.” Dulmea gazes out through the madly glazed windows, hair smoothing down her dress. “They made you think you were someone before you met me. And who you were then could not have heard me - so my words were nothing to you. They did not exist. Just like you ignored all sounds a mortal could not have heard. I could hear their whispering - and so could you. But you brushed it away because your mind would not accept such All-Maker blessed acuity.”

Keris makes a face. “Bastards. What... what happened in here? The scars on the land. Was that them, tearing feelings out of me?”

Her mother meets her eyes. “Yes. This world is made of the interplay of your soul; your thoughts; your feelings. They tore strips out of it. Out of you.”

“I don’t... I don’t have the panic over checking on the twins and Atiya and Aiko anymore,” Keris confesses. “I don’t even know what else they took.” She sniffs. “And... and you saw me. Back then. What I was like before you.”

“Yes.” Her music is melancholy. “I did. And I have seen you grow. Seen you become who you are now.”

“What... what did you...”

Keris can’t finish the question. Her eyes flick up to Dulmea’s, then away. She shrinks in on herself and huddles around her teacup, even as she curls into her mother’s side. Waiting for an opinion, or a judgement.

“Nearly everything. More than everything.” Dulmea sighs. “Parts you cut out when you killed Rat, but I could put together from the holes you ignored.”

“I... I know,” Keris admits. “You filled them in for me. Reminded me. You caught those parts of me when I let them go and kept them safe for me.”

She looks up tremulously.

“Do... do you think I’m a bad person?” she asks in a tiny voice. “For... Gull. The last years with her, and forgetting her after. And all the rest, too.”

A soft chord. “Keris. Child. I do not love like you do. I have never been in a place such as you; never loved and hated someone like that. I cannot say what I would have done in that place. And as for the rest, what came afterwards...” she reaches out with a hair tendril and lifts Keris’s chin. “You were a serf. You did what you had to in order to survive. Why would that make you ‘bad’?”

Keris sniffs, and leans further into her touch, seeking the comfort. Dulmea’s hair wraps around her, and then Keris remembers the loss of her own and she’s sobbing again, even harder than before, burbling out hysterical words of loss and maiming and fear.

“Wha’m I gonna _do?”_ she wails, somewhere near the end. “S’barely en’thing _left_ ’a me!”

“You are going to listen to Rathan, go back to Hell, and there you will get medical help,” Dulmea says as if it is the most obvious thing in the world. “And that is if you cannot simply regrow the missing limbs, just as you did for your uncle Xasan.”

Keris sniffs. “M’left arm, though,” she whimpers. “S’Iris’s arm. I can’t just replace it, or she’d be out a home. But s’too broken to heal, an’ it _hurts_ so _much_...”

“Then that is something you will speak to Unquestionable Lilunu about,” Dulmea says. “And given she and Zanara made Iris in the first place, no doubt they will contrive a way to make a new limb that she can dwell in.”

Calming, Keris nods into her shoulder, and hugs her a little more closely.

“Thank you, mama,” she says. “You saved me. Even from in here, where you couldn’t stab them like Eko or bite at them like Iris, you _saved_ me. Thank you.”

She runs her hair across Keris’s scalp. “It is what I am here for,” she says softly.

* * *

Keris sleeps for a long time, hurt as she is. Nearly two days, as it works out. She only wakes to the sound of Rathan’s raised voice.

“I can’t believe you did that! And not only that, but you took the babies!”

“They needed to see new things.” Evedelyl’s voice rumbles. “And Kali was getting bored.”

“I can’t believe you!”

“Mmma?” Keris mumbles, hearing her mama’s voice. One of her mama’s voices. _A_ mama’s voice. “S’wrong?”

“And now you’ve woken mama! You’re so... no, get back here!”

“Mama mama mama mama mama!” The cry of the Kali who wants attention rapidly draws closer, and her little wing bundles in and jumps on her. Quickly, but somewhat more sedately, followed by Ogin. “Mama mama mama we went on a walk with huge grandmother and we saw all the new people and they gave me food!”

“Yeah?” Keris breathes, taking stock. She’s in a tent, on a cot, under a blanket. Which is probably for the best, since it’s preventing them from seeing the state of her. Her left arm is numb in a way that, since painkillers don’t work on it, probably means Oula has deadened the nerves at the shoulder with acupuncture. She can feel a heavy cast against her side that’s probably either Vali’s work or Oula’s mercury-moulding. Or both.

“What kind of people, little feather?” she asks. “Were they surprised at how big grandma was?”

Kali sits on her chest, golden eyes alight. “A bit. But not very! And mama mama mama they looked like us and you and everyone else and even Hany and Uncle! And they said I was a door or a bell!”

“Adorable,” Ogin corrects her.

“That!”

“You sure are adorable,” Keris smiles. “Come let mama give you a kiss. You too, Ogin. Did Aiko and Atiya go with you?”

“Yeah!” Kali beams. “They didn’t look like them though! But we all got food and there are kids there and they have pet kats like Vali’s and it was so much fun and there are lots of people and I ate a chicken!”

Keris leans up a little to kiss her on the forehead. “Why don’t you go get Aiko to come in here? And ask Rathan to bring Atiya in, too. Then we can all cuddle and you can tell me all about it.”

“Okay!” Kali leaps off her, and goes running - because she almost does everything at a run. Ogin stays, looking down at her mournfully.

“You’ve lost things that belong to you, mama,” he says, after some consideration. “Your arm is missing. And your hair-arms. And your legs. Where did you leave them?”

“Some bad people stole them,” she tells him, because Ogin isn’t one to be babied and will probably know if she lies anyway. “I beat them all and won in the end, but they’d thrown them away. So I need to go back and ask Lady Lilunu how to get new ones.”

“Oh.” And that makes perfect sense to him, because he knows that Lady Lilunu does big and amazing things. “We’re going back to Hell.”

Her little moonbeam doesn’t like asking questions.

“We are, yes. Clever boy. Do you want to tell me about all the things you saw with grandma on your walk? Where did you go? Up the big valley?”

Ogin nods. “We saw the houses of the people. Kali is right. They look like you. And like Kali. Not much like me. They all have legs and darker skin. They have kats like Vali’s but some of them have plants instead or ribbons. There was a nice black kat who liked me. We had lamb stew down the valley. Also they have goats and sheep up on the slopes. The river was very cold when Kali fell in it.”

((oh my god they literally have _kats_ instead of cats))  
((ahahaha))

“It sounds like you had a lot of fun,” Keris praises, giving him his own forehead-kiss as Kali charges back in. Rathan follows her, carrying Atiya and holding Aiko’s hand. Keris gives him a grateful smile.

“Everyone up on the bed,” she says. “Come on, give mama her cuddles. Iris can cuddle you all back. Rathan? What’s the word on the valley?”

Rathan’s hair flicks irritably, but he smiles at her as he deposits a sleepy Atiya in the crook of her right arm and the bed creaks under Aiko’s weight. “Well, firstly, Evedelyl is,” he glances at the children, and changes the word he was going to use, “naughty. But from what she says, it’s somewhat like the area around Baisha. Only the valley is broader, obviously, and it’s warmer. There’s two towns she saw, and a bunch of villages and smaller places. A lot of sheep and goat herders on the slopes, and she says they look darker skinned - more like your Ney. But the valley people have crops and some cattle. And cluckers, from the City, and kats - and other forms of wildlife from home. And the area around the river is like a milder version of the Swamp.”

Keris nods slowly. “And the people are friendly? How’d they react to Evedelyl and the others?”

“Yes, she says. Which comes as a surprise to me. She said that when she asked if they knew any other giants, they said no, but they also said they didn’t know anyone from far away, so they were keeping an open mind as to whether outsiders were giants or not.”

That draws a snort from Keris, which provokes a round of giggles from Kali, which gets a quiet smile from Ogin. Aiko, though, is quite and wide-eyed and clutching at the covers over Keris’s numb, immobilised, cast-bound left arm.

“Aiko, sweetheart?” Keris asks, gentling her voice. “It’s alright. I lost a few bits of me, but I’m going to get them back, and I’m not leaving you. Come on, come up here so I can give you your kiss.” Aiko is, after all, older than the others - and the worrier. She clings to Keris, shivering in fear.

“I don’t like this trip,” she mumbles.

“I know, honey,” Keris soothes. “But it’s almost over, and I’m going back to Hell soon. You can come with me if you want, or you can go live with your Daddy until Calibration and get lots of hugs from him. And then at Calibration you can see everyone. Does that sound good?”

“I want mummy,” she mutters.

“Me too, sweetheart. We’ll see her soon, I hope.” Keris pushes herself into a half-sitting position with more effort than she’d like to admit, and leans down to kiss her on the nose. “There now. Maybe we could have another little trip into the valley so I could see it, and to get some supplies for the trek back down the mountains?” She glances at Rathan, eyebrow raised.

“We probably do,” he admits. “I don’t want you to travel too far until we’re sure that nothing is going to open up. And I’m not sure you should fly in this condition.”

Keris wrinkles her nose. “It’s been two days,” she complains in an undertone, after poking Kali into pulling Aiko and Ogin into a loud cuddle pile around Iris to distract them. “Usually by this time all my wounds have closed - scabbed over at least, if not actually healed. But I can still feel places where I’ll start bleeding again if I pull too hard. I can barely even sit up.” Her nose wrinkles in frustration, and she sighs. “Urgh. You’re probably right. No flying. It’ll have to be the boring way down.”

“And,” Rathan orders her, “you’re going to take this easy. And take plenty of rests.”

Grumbling, Keris capitulates. She’d sulk and fight harder, but she honestly doesn’t have the energy. It’s almost a relief to go back to dozing and long naps and being carried around in a makeshift covered palanquin-chair by two of Asarin’s armour-worm demons.

* * *

The next day, they set out. For the first time, Keris can look down the valley which used to be covered by weird, heat-rippling madness and forest. It is no longer like that. It is definitely true what her souls have said; this does look sort of look like the area around Baisha. Not quite the same, of course. The weather is different, and the stone and plants have something of Hell - and rather more of the world within her soul - about it.

The Shogunate ruins stop about when she gets to the boundary space. Presumably none of them had truly survived within the wyld-zone. But the upper reaches of the valley are the rougher places, where bamboo and green trees dominate. Lower down the valley, that’s where she can see the fields and the villages and even the towns.

“Mama?” she asks; looking up at Evedelyl. “Which bits did you look at, when you came?” Her eyes trail along the valley edges; high knife-like spires and peaks of stone that look like a forest of knives that the bamboo grows thick between, then traces the slopes back down to the river. “Do they have boats? I think I’d like to go in the water a bit.”

“No real boats,” Evedelyl rumbles, from where she’s keeping up alongside the palanquin easily with long, loping strides. “Though they have some rafts they fish from or use to carry things down stream. The current is too swift and the river too narrow for real sailing.”

Keris pouts, but if the current’s that swift it probably wouldn’t be safe for her to swim in her current condition anyway. The thought brings another spike of grief with it, and she rides it out with careful breathing as they descend down the hill.

She’s distracted as they start to reach the settled parts of the slopes, below where sheep and goats are left to graze under the eyes of herders. Here there are stepped fields ringed by dry-stone walls, and Keris peers about with interest as they go, interested to see what her instincts had Shaped into being for farms and crops, given neither had ever been part of her experience as a blacksmith’s daughter turned big-city street rat.

This, at least, seems to be somewhat akin to the creatures of the outer world. There is nothing like Lilunu’s farms and their Hellish facsimiles of the natural world. Things are subtly off - as Vali points out, the horns on the sheep and goats look sort of stony and Spirish - but still, nothing truly stands out.

“Mama! Mama mama mama!” Kali tugs on her arm, pointing furiously in the road. “Look look look!”

There’s a young feral kat down there; sleek and black and sunning itself. It’s definitely a kat, too; it glistens like oil, and is the size of an adult cat despite its kittenish proportions.

Keris whistles softly to it, clicking her tongue. It cocks its head at the strange wood-and-fabric contraption and the metal men who hold it... and then Kali becomes a tiger cub, which it seems to take as evidence of trustworthiness. It jumps up and nuzzles her chin, which she responds to with a happy birdlike trill of delight.

Keris smiles at them, and kisses Ogin on the cheek when he moves up to her shoulder to avoid their play. “Look at all the farms and plants,” she whispers to him, nodding at the stepped fields. “What do you think they are? They look like the roots and tubers to me.”

She is not, and has never been, much of a farmer. But she can more or less recognise some of the more common crops, and these aren’t rice paddies. Maybe sweet potato? Or those mushroot things Rounen has fields of around his estate in the Near-City Swamp; the leaves look kind of similar to those.

Asarin is making her own conclusions from beside Keris in the palanqin. “You... made this?” she enquires. “All of this? This isn’t merely what existed here before those nasty chaos-beasts came?”

Keris shakes her head. “N-no. Um. Calesco said there were Nexan bits? I think that was me. I remember... well, I don’t remember, because I was trapped in lies at the time. But from what Eko said, I was twisting the Wyld Zone into looking like Nexus used to even before I forced Shape on it all. Playing out my memories in a fake city. I think the towns are just... bits of what I was already doing to it when it was fluid, that got shored up and made solid.”

She looks up at the sky with blank, faraway eyes, her lips pressed tight together. “It was blue, before. A city of white stone, under a blue star. The light was everywhere. I couldn’t get away from it, no... no matter how far I...”

Iris bites her hard on the ear, and she snaps back to herself, startling slightly.

“... y-yeah,” she covers hastily. “Anyway. Yeah, I’m sure.”

“How can you _make_ places like this?” Asarin demands, puffing out her cheeks sulkily.

Keris gives a helpless one-shouldered shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t even remember how I did it, not really. I was...”

She glances down at Ogin and decides not to use the words ‘half-mad with pain’ with his eyes and ears on her. “I wasn’t thinking clearly,” she says instead. “Sorry. If I remember more, I’ll tell you.”

“No, no, no, you don’t get it,” Asarin says, eyes wide. _“They_ used to be able to do this. Two thousand years ago. The golden lords! I saw it!”

Keris blinks, and sits up a bit more. “They... they could?” She frowns. “Well... I guess that makes sense. We are...”

She pauses, not entirely sure how much Asarin knows about the details of her keter-soul. It’s no great surprise that she can do this if the Solars of old had been able to - it’s the same power, after all; Yamal’s passed on to her. But is she allowed to tell Asarin that? Or is it knowledge meant only for the Yozis?

“... I’m not sure how much you know, or are allowed to know,” she says carefully. “That doesn’t surprise me, but I’ve been given leave by Orabilis to study certain things for Unquestionable Lilunu’s health. Some of what I know comes from that.”

There’s a note of fear in Asarin’s tone. Fear of, and also fear for, Keris.

“I’m too young to know how things were before the gods rebelled,” Asarin says helplessly. “But,” she lowers her voice, “only the golden lords and the Unquestionable are said to have the power to turn chaos into new worlds.”

“... well,” Keris says, “the Unquestionable gave me my power - they gave all of us serfs our power. And I’m the equal of the sun-chosen of the modern day.”

She reaches out with her right hand, curling her ring and little finger around Asarin’s shoulder. “And your friend. Aren’t I?”

Asarin sighs. “It’s just... you’re barely older than them,” her gesture takes in Kali, who’s face to face with the kat mewing at it and Ogin who’s sucking his thumb, “and yet you’re so powerful. It’s just a little depressing, darling.”

Keris feels a little irrationally offended by that, because... okay, fine, Asarin is five _millennia_ old and saw countless generations pass by before Keris was even born, but still. To be compared to her toddlers as if there’s barely any difference between them stings a bit.

“Well,” she says. “I... I guess that just means we need to look harder for ways to help you gain power and become your Greater Self’s equal. I didn’t really earn my power - when you get yours; you will have.”

“Well, I suppose.” She sighs again, looking decidedly mopey. “And whatever was here before is gone, washed away by chaos. We won’t be finding any trinkets of ancient power here.”

There’s no real response Keris can make to that, and so she turns her attention to watching as they go down the hill to the fields and pasture of the valley floor, and make their way towards the nearest village; a squat little thing sitting next to a bend in the river.

Keris eyes it with cautious suspicion, her eyes flicking over the familiar-looking buildings. They’ve obviously been noticed coming down the hill - Evedelyl is far from stealthy - because there are people trickling out to meet them at the edge of the buildings.

Keris sees the tales are true. They look Tairan. They look Harbourite. But there’s more mixed in with them - a hint of Realm to some of them, a bit of Northerner in others. And they are wary, but interested by this peculiar convoy of demons and akuma and one princess of Hell who have come here to see them.

They are invited to lunch, as guests from the outside world, and there are plenty of questions from the curious locals on their nature, their purpose, and what they are doing in this village, Beshia. Keris is, for once, too tired to really take an active role in the talking. She makes a few noises about a fight with fae high up in the mountains and lets Rathan take it from there.

He follows the lead she’s given him, and spins up a lovely drama that mostly follows the truth. They were exploring these high peaks for their clan, he explains, to find a place where they could settle. But a raiding party from a fae-hold drew them into conflict with the monsters, and they were forced to take up arms in self-defence. His mother fought bravely, but sustained great injuries in her battle with them and was captured for a while, until a group effort from her children rescued her and vanquished the city that the chittering chaos-spawn had called ‘Chir’.

It’s terribly emotional and believable in his words - and indeed, Keris’s wounds and the signs of battle-damage to Asarin’s armour back him up, hiding the fact that he never really gives a concrete location for where the battles had taken place. Now, he explains, they need to return home to their clan with what they’ve mapped out up here - but they can’t do that until Keris is recovered enough to travel and they’ve replenished their supplies.

They are making their own judgements, their own conclusions.

The old woman - Banu - who seems to lead this village looks Rathan in the eye. “You are not mortal men and women,” she says. “Oh, do not lie to me. You are a horned boy. The girl over there in black has wings. You walk with a giantess beast-woman. The girl is a tiger; the boy has tails for legs. And yet...

“We see the kinship. Perhaps this is all a trick. In some of the valleys nearby, mad creatures and trickster beasts live. But you are kin to us, but do not know us - and we do not know you.

“Perhaps you are gods, who were once men, come to the land of your birth. Or perhaps it was your forefathers who came from here. But this may be a problem we have long suffered that may have its conclusion. You see,” she explains, “we have no gods, and we know that people are meant to have gods. But we do not know what a god should look like. Sometimes, men say they are gods, but they die like men in time. And anyway, who can trust someone who is so insistent they are a god.” She sniffs. “They’re clearly looking for something.”

“But maybe you can be our gods, because I can feel how powerful you spirits from beyond are. Now, we’ll need to see more things, more proof, see what’s in it for us. But if you really are gods, then it stands to reason that gods who are kin to the men are better gods than strangers, and that gods who can be seen and felt and do things for their people are better than gods who hide themselves away. And since there are many of you, you can do more for us as our gods than if we just worshipped one or two.”

Keris laughs softly. The _audacity_ of the woman - the casually mercentile approach to gods, the perfectly _Nexan_ attitude to self-proclaimed divinity, the recognition of kin - she’s already thinking of them as her own people, she realises, barely after meeting them.

They are anyway, she supposes. Firisutu would say that she has a duty to lead and cherish anything she creates.

“Iris,” she calls softly, and the dragon rises from her coiled place around Keris’s throat. “A stone, please?” Keris asks, and the little dragon dips down to pick one up in her mouth and touch it to the fingers of Keris’s cast-bound left arm.

She can’t move it, or even really feel it past the acupuncture needles that are blocking off the pain, but the power in it is never really gone, and Iris is helping. Under the eyes of the village, the stone shifts to Valiant basalt, then Haneylian, and then the bark flakes away to reveal a perfect near-Swamp pomegranate.

“We can show you proof enough,” Keris says, settling back into the cushions. “And if you take us as your gods, we’ll care for you. So. Show us your land, and your people, who might be ours to guard.”


	15. Chapter 15

Keris doesn’t remember much of the next few days. There are things happening with Calesco and Rathan and organisation, but she’s too tired to think of what’s going on. She’s tired and sick to the bone, and she sleeps through most of the explanation as for what they’re doing.

But she’s carried across to the other side of the island, where there’s the Baisha waiting.

“Okay, mama,” Rathan says, crossing his arms. “Now say goodbye to everyone staying in this world, then send some messages telling everyone what you’re doing. We have the ship and we’re heading back to Hell, so you’ll be comfortable.”

Keris takes a moment to remember who’s staying, then beckons Calesco in for a hug. She presses a gentle kiss to her daughter’s temple, and squeezes softly.

“Best behaviour,” she murmurs. “Till I get back, however long it takes. Rounen will help you. This is the first part of your punishment, so don’t beat yourself up while you do it, okay? And remember I love you. Always.”

Lips wobbling behind her veil, Calesco silently nods. Aiko tugs Kali by the hand and leads her over to allow both of them to hug Calesco’s legs goodbye. Calesco twines her fingers through both little girls’ hair.

“Atiya, darling. I love you so, so much. Calesco will take good care of you, so be a good girl for her, okay?” Keris sniffs, and presses a kiss to her little princess’s forehead. She’ll miss Atiya terribly - but with Noh’s prophecy looming over her and the frailties of her only human child’s health, she just can’t risk her in Hell.

“Bye bye Atiya!” Kali says, sniffing herself and throwing herself at Calesco to cuddle the little girl in her arms tenderly. “I’ll miss you lots and lots and lots and draw you lots of pictures and bring you back presents, I promise!”

Ogin is more reserved, and just holds out a hand to his younger sister as Rathan reclaims his twin. Atiya looks at him gravely through her thick-lensed glasses and then holds out her own, letting them touch very lightly; finger-to-finger and palm-to-palm.

“Be good for Calley,” Ogin says, repeating his mother’s words. “I will stop Kali pouncing on you when we get back.”

Then - in a move that he must have copied from _someone_ , though Keris hasn’t the faintest idea who - he bends his head and kisses her lightly on the back of the hand like the princess she is, and retreats to the wheelchair. It sparks an actual laugh from Keris.

“Mama,” she half-giggles, half-sniffles up at Evedelyl with a watery smile. “Take... take good care of our clan while I’m gone. I love you, and so will they. I promise I’ll be safe and get better.”

“Of course you will,” Evedelyl says, shifting on her paws. She leans down to kiss Keris’s brow. “I’ll see to our new people.”

“And Lady Asarin, Rounen,” Keris cranes her neck to look at them both. “I’m leaving my people in Saata in your hands. I trust you both. Thank you for your help, both of you.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Rounen says.

Asarin harrumphs. “You owe me for this,” she says, brow creased up. “I didn’t even get any Shogunate treasures from this.” But even in her state, Keris can see the concern in her brown eyes.

“I’ll make sure of it next time,” Keris huffs weakly. “And I’ll make sure to be all healed up and have Eko out by the time I get back.”

“You better,” she says, turning her back on Keris.

There are more farewells to say, and then there’s the process of getting everyone onboard and everything settled. Keris wishes she could have gone back home, but the Baisha has rushed to get to the meeting point on the north side of Shuu Mua, and Rathan is refusing to let her sidetrack.

“You need to tell Lilunu we’re coming, and then sleep,” her heartless bully of a son says as the ship travels through the depths of the seas of the Anarchy.

Keris grumbles, but nods weakly. Raising Iris off her arm and casting another ball of opalescent fire with a warning that they’re setting off across the Desert in about half a scream is enough exertion to almost knock her out again, and she settles back into a doze that makes her miss the crossing into the black seas between worlds.

* * *

It’s a rap on her door that wakes Keris from her latest nap. Aiko is there, serious-eyed and peeking her head around the door. Kali and Ogin are also there, wearing harnesses that _have_ to have been made by Vali and seem designed to tie them to Aiko’s belt. Presumably she’s one person they can’t drag around.

“Auntie Keris,” Aiko says, nervously. “The captain snake-lady says ‘Tell her we’re here’.”

Keris mumbles something unintelligible and rearranges herself. The szulo sitting by her bed carefully picks her up and gets her set into the little wheeled palanquin-seat she’s been using.

“Thank you, Aiko,” Keris says. “Did she say whether she meant ‘here’ as in Hell or ‘here’ as in the Althing?” She pauses, and shrugs. “Actually, I suppose we can just find out. Come on, let’s go up and see where we are.”

The mad green sun of Hell shines down upon the deck of the Baisha, which gleams. The dome of the Conventicle reaches overhead. There are signs of damage to it, though; scars in the ceiling gouged out of the beating stone, strange clouds hanging over half-ruined buildings, and the structures are twisted and malformed in a way Keris has never seen before.

Lilunu is on the quayside, hair a deep indigo, curvaceous and almost gravid looking, the skin on her left side coming up in burn scars. “You!” she demands, jabbing a finger at Keris that sparks. “You! How dare you not take better care of yourself!” Her eyes narrow as she sees the state Keris is in. “Do you have _any_ idea of how worried I’ve been?”

((... ohhhh wow.))

Aiko flinches away, hiding behind Keris’s chair. Even Ogin and Kali are shrinking back.

“Li-Lilunu,” Keris stutters, taken aback. She wheels herself closer cautiously. “I... I didn’t mean to make you worry...”

“You!” Lilunu snaps her fingers imperiously at the crewmen carrying her. “Take her this way!”

Keris yelps as her wheeled chair is unceremoniously picked and carted forward according to Lilunu’s direction. She manages a helpless glance back at Rathan and the babies, but Lilunu doesn’t seem particularly inclined to wait for everyone to catch up as she leads the way.

Iris lifts her head off Keris’s - still cast-bound and acupuncture-numbed - left arm with a concerned tongue of rainbow flame, and Keris hastily pets her head to get her to settle down until she sees where they’re going.

The building she leads Keris to is not exactly a building. It’s more an outgrowth of the natural rock - or, rather, unnatural rock - sea-washed and made of greenish coral. The stairs down to it are crude, and the walls are wet and embedded with pearls.

Lilunu slumps down in something that looks like it was once an ornate throne, but it’s been dissolved and melted down so it’s this sedimentary seat stacked with cushions. She scowls at Keris - and at Rathan too, who’s been sure to be there to defend her. “Well?” she demands. “You promised you’d keep yourself safe!” Her eyes cast a fierce, ever-changing light over this dark place, and ice is freezing around her feet.

“I... I...” Keris stutters. For once, she’s entirely unable to conjure up words - and under the weight of a demon princess’s attention, even Rathan is paralysed.

Iris saves them. She uncurls from Keris’s arm and flickers through shapes as she darts across the gap between them; dragon-cat-woman- _girl_.

The little girl; black like a hole cut out of space, with burning rainbow eyes and prehensile hair, cannons into Lilunu’s arm. Fire streams from her - from her mouth, from her eyes, from her hands and from her hair. It forms shapes and scenes and symbols, quicker and quicker - mountains and trees and snowflakes; waves and cities and insects; swords and spears and arrows. Faster and faster they come, until Keris can’t even keep up with what Iris is showing; each image there only for the flicker of an eye before shifting into the next. And she speeds up still, until the pictures in the fire are a bright and strobing blur, pouring out of her in a babbled stream that she must have been holding in ever since that very first moment in the Wyld Zone.

She catches the last image, just as the cloud of fire that’s grown to engulf the girl, the demon princess and the throne flares blindingly bright one last time and vanishes.

It’s a crying face.

And with that, Iris bursts into tears and latches her arms around Lilunu’s neck, sobbing into her shoulder.

Lilunu blinks. Blinks again. And while her hair stays blue - in fact, it loses the brassy streaks that had been creeping into it - the scarring along her left side fades away as darker skin wells up from below to replace it. Slowly, very slowly, she wraps her arms around Iris and cuddles her tightly. Rocks her from side to side.

“She saved me,” Keris says into the silence. “I went mad - my grip on reality broke, and the raksha pulled me into a stageplay of my past when I ran into the wyld zone. If it hadn’t been for Iris, I’d have been lost there. But she just wouldn’t let me go. She did everything she could to wake me - and when they drove her off, she came back with _Eko_. That got me into control, and then... then I lived it out again. Until you sent me Dulmea, and I remembered who I really was.”

Lilunu juggles Iris until she’s got her in her arms, the little girl curled up against her. Iris has a thumb in her mouth. Gently and not entirely practiced, Lilunu rocks her.

“It’s true,” Rathan says, sweeping in with a flick of his hair. “Mama led a major team of herself and my brothers and sisters and Asarin in to deal with a wyld nest. That was six demon lords, plus mama. But the forces there were much, much more powerful than we’d found in the scouting and Mama got separated from us.”

“The one in charge,” Keris says with a shudder. “His domain was a Shogunate one. He called himself the Blue Star.”

She doesn’t need to say any more. The sentence hangs there, surrounded by horrible implications.

“Did... did everyone else make it out alive?” Lilunu asks. Iris’s presence seems to be calming her, and though her hair remains a deep indigo, her nails are turning into shiny crystals and her dress reshapes itself so it’s bedecked with ribbons and midnight-black. Keris can see the unhealthy dominance by the Great Mother recede.

“None of the raksha did,” Keris replies, with more than a bit of savage satisfaction. “After I woke up, I maimed him and then flattened the wyld zone. Or... burnt it, or ate it, or...” she shakes her head. “I’m not sure _what_ I did, honestly. I haven’t been able to do it again. Or even call on the muscle that did it. I’ve tried.”

“Everybody else made it out in varying degrees of health, milady,” Rathan adds. “Vali was injured, and Haneyl...” he glances at Keris. “... had to return to mama, along with Eko when mama absorbed her by accident. All of us got a bit battered while we were trying to get to mama and they put mazes between us and her. But no deaths, and Vali’s already healed, and mama’s wounds are scarred over so she’s not in any danger anymore.”

Lilunu sighs. “I had to watch you get hurt,” she says in a tiny voice, not meeting Keris’s eyes. She’s looking only at Iris, who’s nodding along to her. “I... I thought you were going to die. And I could do _nothing_.”

She thumps the arm of her slagged seat. Green fire flares, and the entire left side disintegrates into molten, glowing oozing lava. She takes a deep breath, muscles visibly straining under her right arm, and grits her teeth. “I’m taking Iris back to my palace. Send me Zanara. I... I just can’t talk to you like this, Keris. I just _can’t_.”

“I... yes, my lady.” Keris slumps; head hanging, shoulder sagging. “I’m... really sorry. I wish I... I wish it hadn’t happened like this. I wanted to spare you worry.”

“Well, you... no. No. Not talking to you, Keris.” The Conventicle Malfeasant, Soul of the Yozis, Speaker of the All-Thing raises her nose in the air. “Hmmph!”

Despite the solemnity of the occasion, and despite the guilt crushing her chest, a hint of a smile flickers at the edge of Keris’s mouth as Rathan wheels her out with a respectful bow. She knows that gesture. That’s a Haneyl gesture. It’s an Asarin gesture. It’s an “I’m mad at you, but only because I love you, and I’ll forgive you in time” gesture.

“Take us back to the ship,” she tells Rathan. “We can send Zanara to talk to her, and drop the children at the townhouse. And... and then I think you should take me to an outgrowth of Szoreny. We could _both_ use a few more tricks up our sleeves in case fights like this break out again.”

That gets her a very intent stare from Rathan, but he doesn’t say anything until they’re out. “Why do I feel this is you doing something very stupid, mama?” he says bluntly in a very Rat-like tone. “Beyond experience, that is?”

Keris glances up at him. “I’ve heard,” she says slowly, “that the Silver Forest has ten thousand branches, and that if you cut one off He simply grows two more. And I’ve seen Szorenic akuma. All silver-bladed branches and bone-crushing roots.”

She reaches back and lays her maimed hand on his. “Mama taught you how to kill, just like she taught all of us - but you’re the least comfortable with it, aren’t you? It’s not your fault. The gifts of the Great Mother I gave you aren’t the fighting kind. But the quicksilver in my blood is yours, too - the form, the body-nature of Szoreny. I think if I meditate there, I can learn how to grow limbs like he does. How to regrow them. And I think you can help me, and learn how to be more comfortable fighting in the bargain.”

“Bad idea. Got it.” He rolls his eyes. “And I expect I’ll need to carry you away when it all goes wrong and your reflection tries to drag you into a mirror world and replace you.”

“That would be the other reason why I’m asking you to come, yes,” she says cheerfully and without a hint of shame. “Please, darling? I’d like to be able to walk again. And to know that I can get my limbs back mid-combat if I lose any more.”

Rathan clasps his hands together. “First, I want you to get _at least_ a day’s rest in your bed in the townhouse,” he orders. “Then we’ll see.”

Sighing, Keris settles back into her wheeled chair and pouts.

“Fine,” she mutters. “But first thing after that, we find the nearest root-forest and visit.”

* * *

It is not one day. It is two days before Rathan the bully considers her suitably rested, and the only thing that changes his mind is her reaction to Sasi’s glass fox.

It is a very brief, cursory message.

“I am coming to Hell,” the fox says in Sasi’s voice. “Expect me in the next few days.” Keris can hear the thrumming stress, the worry, the concern and the taut grief in her girlfriend’s voice.

“... _please_ can we get my limbs back before she gets here?” she tries. “How did Sasi even find out about me being hurt? Did Lilunu tell her?” She’s clutching at the armrest of her wheeled chair, nervously squeezing it as best she can with two fingers. Sasi does not sound good. At all. And Keris had been really, really hoping to keep this little episode from her.

“Who can tell?” Rathan says blandly. “But I suppose.” He runs his fingers over her scalp. “At the very least, it’ll maybe make you better tempered. Maybe.”

“Then let’s go! Let’s go let’s go let’s go _please_ , Rathan! Vali’s looking after the kids, Zanara’s off with Lilunu, we don’t have anything to do and I’m _crawling out of my skin_ here. I need to _move!”_

Rathan sighs. “If something bad happens to you, I’m dragging you away,” he says, “and then calling Vali to sit on you.”

Despite a lot of pouting, he refuses to change his mind on that score. But he takes her to the tamest outgrowth of the roots of the Silver Forest in the Conventicle, and that’s enough for Keris.

The Hundred Mirror Garden is not like the extrusions of Szoreny Keris has seen elsewhere in Hell. It is contained. Tamed. The growths protrude up through carefully placed stone, and channels carry the mercury away into ornamental ponds that oddly resemble the meditative ponds in Immaculate temples. There’s even the small bridge over the pond, reflected in its shimmering surface.

“There,” Keris says, pointing. “The coppices. Prop me up among them.” She breathes slowly as her son dubiously puts her down next to the stumps from which dozens of thinner branches sprout. This is what she wants. This power to _regrow_.

... now what?

Urgh. This is why she hates trying to learn things on purpose instead of just letting them come. She has no idea what she’s meant to be doing here. Meditating?

... fine, she can meditate.

“Help me get my left hand on one of these?” she asks, resting her right between two shoots thick enough for a spearhaft where they emerge from a stump. She braces for the flavour as Rathan moves her still-numbed arm. The flesh is unresponsive due to the needles in her shoulder, but the chakras underneath don’t care about such petty things as nerve blocks.

To the touch, it is nothing but smooth, sliding mercury - but there’s something else under the surface. Like a hundred hands, just like hers, reaching out to touch her. Trying to grasp at the sensation gets her nothing. It just flickers away and snaps her out of the state of mind she needs to sense it. But going under again and waiting has it approach again, the hundred hands just close enough that they can’t quite brush against her fingers.

Keris has done this before, with alley cats and sorcerous enlightenment and mistrustful children both mortal and demon-lord. She doesn’t chase the feeling or try grabbing it again. She circles it, lets it come, focusing on how it brushes just shy of her phantom skin, looking-but-not-looking at it out of the corner of her eye; the way that she does with stars too dim to see straight-on in the sky which only show themselves when you look just to the side of them.

After a little while, she’s no closer to touching the sensation, but she’s beginning to think she has the shape of it down. There’s something to the way it fits into the tree, the way the hands push up from under the mercury to-

“Mama!”

There’s something shaking her. Keris’s eyes snap open and she flails at Rathan. “I almost had it!” she complains. “You couldn’t give me ten minutes?”

“It’s been _almost a scream_ , mama.”

That brings her up short, and she squints suspiciously at Rathan. “It... didn’t feel like that long.”

Rathan’s sigh is pure Rat. There’s nothing to say but that. He gestures at her with the book he bought along. “Well, it was.”

Keris has the good grace to blush. “Um. Well. Thank you for waiting. Home now? And... can we come back tomorrow? I really think I almost had it.”

He sighs. “Really? Well, we’ll see.” He scowls at her. “You’re not allowed to push yourself too hard, do you hear me?”

“I was just sat still all scream! I wasn’t even doing anything strenuous! And anyway, I’m all healed!”

Rathan gives her missing limbs an incredulous look, and she winces.

“... you know what I mean.”

“Fine,” he relents. “But I’m watching you, mama!”

Aiko has perked up a little with the news that her mother is coming, but still needs some cuddles that night which Kali and Ogin join in on. So fortified; Keris travels back to the garden the next day, and again sets herself up amid the copse of Szoreny; her hands splayed across the regrowth from clean-cut stumps and her mind stretching out to the hundred hands trapped within.

This time, she’s more aware of the time passing outside her focus, though only vaguely. It only takes her two or three hours before she feels the first brush of mercury-bark fingers across her own.

That doesn’t seem to be enough, she thinks in irritation as she matches their pressure. So... now what?

... oh. Of course. These aren’t Szoreny’s hands. These are _her_ hands. She doesn’t just need to touch them. She needs to work out how to bring them to growth from her own stumps.

The hours keep ticking by as she gets to work.

((Cog + Occult, Diff 5))  
((4+5+2 stunt+9 Szoreny ExD {gifts, meets expectations, self-destructive}=20. 10 sux.))

The first mark of success is when she feels a tingling. It’s like phantom limb syndrome. Only it’s in a hand she never had before. She blinks her eyes open. Rathan is reading, and has a plate of some kind of wraps beside him that look a lot nicer than typical Hellish street food. He looks over at her as she grunts and pushes forward from the - rather uncomfortable - stump she’s been leaning back against for the past howevermany hours.

Holding up her right hand, Keris breathes out slowly, and focuses.

From the stumps of her thumb, index and middle fingers; tiny sprouts of silver emerge. They length, fill out, gain shape and definition as they grow.

And Keris clenches a closed, full fist with a grin.

_“There_ you are,” she whispers in triumph. Closing her eyes, she shivers as a thousand tingling squirming prickles come from her scalp. And then - oh, glorious, _glorious_ weight and shifting tresses falling down her back and across her shoulders and over her forehead. She laughs out loud, throwing her head back and singing her joy to the sky as her hair returns.

Last are her legs. They take longer - but they’re no harder to call out, and on ten silver toes, Keris stands for the first time since she fled Calesco’s words in the ruins of Chir.

“You have _no idea_ ,” she says with feeling, “how good it feels to be back on my feet.”

Rathan backs away with a hint of wariness. “If they are your feet,” he says. He gestures towards the root like legs with bladed toes, the viciously clawed branch-limbs, the tangled murderous thicket of her quicksilver hair. “Are you sure you're in control of that, mama?” he asks.

“Yes!” Keris protests. Then looks closer at them. “... okay, maybe not,” she admits. Come to think of it, she has less hair than she should. Normally she can do five or six different things with it at a time; right now... only one or two, maybe. It feels like there’s only so many of these branch-limbs she can bring out at a time.

“... well,” she sighs. “I’ve got a scaffold now. And...” some careful squirming produces a moment of discomfort as two types of tree-flesh clash, but some careful internal shifting around gets her past it. “... yes, I can bring out my flesh-roots from these. That means I can do some proper flesh-weaving to fix them the rest of the way.”

She glances around dubiously.

“But... maybe at home. Come on. I want a run.”

“Oh, no,” Rathan says, crossing his arms. “I’m exhausted from sitting around watching you all day. I’m going home to bed. You can go dig up Eko if you want to run.”

Keris grumbles, but reluctantly follows him home and sets herself to the long, tedious task of pulling flesh and bone out into the quicksilver branch-limbs, easing the latter back into her veins even as the former extends.

It’s not a quick process. She’s done this before - for Darling Yellow, for Xasan. But those were feet. A hand. This is three full limbs, plus all her hair. Two screams pass as she paces and works and paces some more and works some more, restoring her right arm’s fingers and her legs.

Her regrown nails are silver. She’s not sure what to think about that. But... well, nail polish is cheap to make, and if need be she can just paint her ring and little finger silver to match the rest. Right?

With fingers and feet regained in flesh, it’s time to work on her left arm. Gritting her teeth against the pain of mangled bone, Keris cracks open the cast and, slowly, tentatively, pulls out the acupuncture needles that Oula so carefully placed in her shoulder to numb and paralyse the limb.

The yell of confusion brings Rathan into her bedroom at a run, to find her staring at her left arm like it’s an official Writ of Pardon for Infernalism from the bureaucracy of Heaven itself.

“Oh, you’ve already done your arm,” he says, with a shrug. “Honestly, mama. Don’t be so surprised.”

“I didn’t!” Keris denies, waving it. “I didn’t even touch it! I took it out of the cast and it was like this already!” Her jagged thicket of quicksilver hair - much expanded with her no longer supporting her legs and fingers the same way - rustles in agitation. “How long has it been healed? _How_ did it heal? I was one step away from cutting it off; it was that mangled!”

Rathan isn’t the only one who came running at Keris’s scream. An Ogin faceplants into the ground behind his big brother, and picks himself up. He looks at Keris. “Oh. Iris’s home is back,” he says. “She’ll like that.”

“Hello sweetheart,” Keris smiles, bending down to pick him up. She hasn’t had as much time as she’d have liked for her babies these last few screams - she hadn’t wanted to risk them on the monstrous clawed things that her limbs had become - and it’s nice to get to cuddle with him again as long as she keeps her hair back.

“It is,” she agrees. “I’m just a bit confused at how, moonbeam, because I was going to fix it with special magic but it turned out it was already fixed.”

He looks at her, tilts his head, and leans in to kiss her arm. Wait, no, he’s licking it. “It’s Iris’s home so Iris wanted it back probably,” he concludes.

Keris looks at her arm suspiciously. “You... you think it’d just grow back no matter what?” she checks. Granted, Ogin is only two, but she’s heard wiser things from younger people before, and she’s learned to trust his perceptiveness.

He considers, looking adorably serious as he gives it some thought. “Everyone needs a home,” he eventually concludes.

“Huh.” Keris turns that over in her head, plopping a few more kisses on his little face that win her a smile. “Well, moonbeam, I think I won’t test that out just in case. But if you’re right, I’ll be very happy about it.”

She glances up at her hair, shrugs, and decides it can wait another scream. “Why don’t you show me what you and Kali and Aiko have been getting up to with your big brother, hmm? I’m sure they’ll like seeing that I’m okay again.”

“We made a house,” Ogin says, snuggling up to her chest and resting his head on her shoulder. “It has a dragon statue. Aiko’s mummy says it is very good.”

Keris goes very still. “Aiko’s... mummy? You... you mean Sasi? She’s here? How... how long has she been here, moonbeam?”

He considers the question. “She came after the last scream. But you have to not tell her I told you because she said it was a surprise. But if she thinks it’s still a surprise, she can still have the surprise of seeing you be surprised.”

Working through that in her head, Keris nods. “I promise, moonbeam. I won’t let her know you told me. Shall we go see Kali and Aiko, then?”

Ogin shakes his head. “Sweets first. Then we can see them.”

Chuckling indulgently, Keris obeys.

* * *

Moving silently, Keris and Ogin sneak up on where Ogin says Sasi is. Her little moonbeam is enjoying the sneaky game a lot, and is copying her and listening to her soft whispers about what to do.

Wait. Damn. This is Ogin, Keris realises too late. He’ll be remembering all this. And will use it later to make her life hell.

Oh well. It’s done. She peeks around the corner. Sasi is here! She’s here in the... uh, Spire-like area that anywhere Vali has been playing for any amount of time turns into, and she’s sitting on a bench, looking away from Keris. Keris can see that she has Aiko on her lap, and from the sounds of things she’s smelling her daughter’s hair as she holds her tight.

Keris swallows; throat dry. After Lilunu’s reception... she’s not ashamed to admit that she’s scared. She hangs back beyond what she’s pretty sure Sasi’s range with her mind-hands is, and notices Ogin watching carefully and marking the line between what Sasi can and can’t feel, despite her not having explained why she’s keeping her distance. Sometimes he’s a little _too_ perceptive.

... well. She’ll have to bite the bullet eventually. She’d prefer if she was able to do it _after_ regenerating her hair, but there’s no time to do that now. Picking Ogin up and letting herself slip into the background, Keris sidles closer. Close enough to sit down on the other end of the bench, facing the opposite way to Sasi.

Then she crosses her fingers and drops back into the narrative.

Sasi doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t twitch. But her “Hello, dear,” is _very_ stressed and Keris can pretty much tell the only reason she hasn’t thrown something at Keris is that she has her daughter on her lap. And a Kali who is happily plaiting flowers into Sasi’s hair, although not very well.

“Lilunu already shouted at me,” Keris murmurs, focusing on Ogin. “I’m so sorry for scaring you. She can’t have had much on... on how I was, when she told you.” She swallows. “Did... did Vali or Rathan fill you in on what happened?”

“I got the Vali version of the story,” Sasi says, taking a deep breath. She slides Aiko off her lap. “Aiko, my darling, go play with Ogin and Kali in the playhouse.”

“But...” Aiko says, looking up. She glances from Sasi to Keris, and balls her little hands into fists by her side.

“Go play in there, Aiko,” and _there’s_ Sasi’s maternal tone, that cuts through stone like butter.

“Yes, mother.” Biting her lip, Aiko goes to obey.

Sasi waits until they are away, and sighs. “Is... is Haneyl all right?” she asks, very, very quietly. “I heard what... what Zanara did to her.”

Tears brim in Keris’s eyes. “She... she’s regrowing,” she says. “She looks... young. Younger than I ever saw her before - she hid, the first time she sprouted, until I pushed back the borders of the fog. She doesn’t remember everything - she’s more like she was back then, and she faints when she tries to bring her memories of later up. Eko had some... some long complicated explanation.”

She sniffs. “It... it was my fault, Sasi,” she whimpers. “I got some mercury in her heart, way back in Taira when I first took the Silver Forest into me. It was poisoning her this whole time. If she’d had a burning with it in her...”

Her eyes are tortured as she looks up.

“Oh, Keris,” Sasi says, wrapping her arms around her and bringing her into a hug. “And look at you now. Your hair is mostly mercury. What have you done to yourself with the Prince of Mirrors?”

“Ah...” Keris grimaces, profoundly thankful that she’d regrown her legs and fingers before finding out Sasi was here. “They kind of... scalped me. So I couldn’t use my hair against them - they knew it was my best weapon. I couldn’t tease it back out with root-fingers, so I had to learn how to grow limbs like the Silver Forest as a scaffold first.”

“So... it’s not... always going to be like this?” Keris feels Sasi’s unseen hands run through her hair. “Ah. Yes. I see. It’s branches of your own blood you’re extruding from your body.”

Keris smiles ruefully, hugging back. “I can get it back to normal in a few screams, don’t worry. Um... there was more to what happened, but I... I don’t think I can talk about it. I tried, with Lilunu. Iris had to tell her instead.”

“Oh, my dear.” Sasi leans her head against her shoulder. “This... is not how I wanted our holiday to start. With slurred messages from you when you sounded high on painkillers.”

“From... from me?” Keris asks, confused. “I thought Lilunu told you?”

“It was a dream.”

Keris pauses for a few moments. Then her eyes narrow.

_“Rathan,”_ she growls. “He must’ve told Calesco - or she might have done it of her own accord? No, he was cagy about how you’d found out. Rrrgh.” She gives annoyance a shot, but it slips away and she sighs as she lays her head back against Sasi. “He was really good. Took charge and got me back here safe and sound. I guess he had a good reason for letting you know.”

Sasi sighs. “It must be nice to rely on your souls like that. How is Seresa doing, by the way?” She gives Keris a rather flirty look. “It’s been lonely without her. Has she managed to worm her way into your affections yet?”

Keris blushes. “She, ah... she’s basically running Cinnamon’s cult for me, at this point. And helped me take over Ca Map in a one-gambit masterstroke over the course of a single night. And was pretty key in finalising my takeover of the Hui Cha. Oh, and she and Calesco are either mortal enemies or bitter rivals; I’m not sure which.”

“Isn’t that kind of thing usually meant to say something more like ‘mortal enemies or best friends’?” Sasi asks, raising her eyebrows. She giggles. “Maybe we’ll come back to find them sharing a bed.”

Tilting her head, Keris considers. “... I... would be very surprised,” she says diplomatically. “There were, uh. Sparks. And oil. And tinder. And firedust. Calesco got a bit... judgemental, about some of the cult stuff.”

Her face falls. “Though... not without reason,” she sighs. “That’s kind of why all of this happened. I was lying to myself.”

That earns Keris an amused look. “Darling,” Sasi says, taking her hand, “I love you. I really do. But honesty, both with others and yourself, has never been a strong point of yours. It always surprises me you don’t have more affinity for the Ebon Dragon.”

Keris pouts. “I’m honest about my _feelings_ ,” she complains. “... mostly. With people who matter. But... this was more than that.”

“Oh dear.” Sasi sighs. “Should we discuss this when the children are in bed?”

“Probably a good idea,” Keris sighs, and turns her attention to trying to decide how in the name of all the hells she’s going to explain _Gull_ and all associated with her to _Sasi;_ the Bag so Baggy that her grandmother’s _literally_ the Scarlet Empress.

“Well,” Sasi says. “I’m here now. And you’re here, and... mostly better. Mostly.” She smiles at Keris. “And I’ve just had a very interesting talk with Kali about how she found a new valley and there were lots of cats there and how she talked to each of them but they didn’t talk back and how there were also lots of children there and she wants to show me the hot springs where she had a bath with ‘Rin-Rin’ and Aiko and Calesco and... well, it went on like that for quite a long time. So at least she had fun.”

“... we did some exploring of the island before running into the wyld zone,” says Keris, which is technically true. Sasi gives her a Look.

“Okay,” she admits, wincing. “And I might have sort of carved some new land out of it. But, uh. Could we go back to the part about not being very honest where that’s concerned? I’m planning to hide Ali and his family there; I’d rather not get it involved in Reclamation stuff.”

“Well,” Sasi says after some thought, “you learned that trick from Testolagh. He mentioned he could do that too. And,” she kisses Keris on the nose, “you are a born liar and deceiver. I love you, Keris, and I’d trust you with my life, but not with keys to my treasury.”

Despite herself, Keris is flattered enough to blush.

“Anyway,” Sasi says, “at least you’re looking better. Have you eaten? I’m hungry, and,” she raises her voice, “Kali sounds like she wants food.”

“Do I?” Kali calls out loudly, sticking her head out the door. “Wait, yes, I do! Food, mama!”

“Food it is then, little feather,” Keris calls back, scooping up her tiger cub as she comes bounding over, trailed by a grumpy Aiko and a placid Ogin. “Come on then, my darlings. Let’s go raid the kitchens.”

“Auntie Keris,” Aiko says seriously, “these are your kitchens. You can’t raid them.”

“Then let’s go _tax_ the kitchens,” Keris very seriously replies, and taps her lightly on the nose. “I hereby name you Chief Cake-Tax Collector Aiko of my estate, in my name.”

Aiko consider that. “I declare the tax to be everything,” she decides.

Her mother ruffles her hair. “Oh, darling, you won’t be able to eat that all.”

“But mother, I _need_ them all.”

“Aiko, tax rates that high aren’t sustainable.”

“Huh?”

Sasi giggles, and shakes her head. “I’ll make sure you get a tutor,” she tells her little girl. “We should get you started on such things soon enough.”

((oh my god this whole family are such dorks))

Laughing, Keris picks Aiko up on a hip, with Kali settled on her shoulder and Ogin climbing up and clinging to her chest. Bestowing fond kisses on each of them, she points kitchenwards and marches off dramatically, Sasi following behind.

* * *

The small children are fed, and Aiko delights Keris with her serious attempts to share her edamame beans with her aunty “because you got hurt and need to eat lots of healthy things to get better”. Then the two mothers sneak off to say their more intimate greetings.

Sleepily, Sasi nuzzles Keris, spooning her in the grand bed. “I’ve missed you, my dear one,” she says. “And not just this way. But definitely in this way.” She nibbles on Keris’s ear. “You’ve ruined me for superhuman dragon-child lovers.”

“Mm,” Keris murmurs. “Good. They don’t deserve you anyway.” She pushes her cheek against Sasi’s chin, careful to keep her jagged mane of vicious mercury-wire out of the way. “How has it been? Are you holding up alright?”

“It’s been hard work. Very hard work,” Sasi says sadly. “I’ve been backing Bijar - my cousin, actually. She has a foolhardy plan to try to get into the Imperial manse and declare herself Empress as the First Scarlet. She’s going to get herself killed, but I never liked her. She is brilliant, though. I might get something useful from her. And then... well, the Deliberative is its own thing. I control a few people there, and I’ve been working to snarl up the operations.” Keris feels her smile. “Not that I have to do much. The Houses are like a sack of cats.”

“Hah. I can imagine. Just keeping the peace between all the demons I’m hosting - Haneyl and Asarin, Calesco and Seresa - Seresa and _Oula_ , for that matter...” Keris almost mentions Hermione, but... no. Too much of a risk. She loves Sasi, but it would be betraying her adopted daughter to risk her location with Sasi’s loyalty to the Yozis - and it would be betraying Sasi to put her in the position of having to choose one over the other. So she smiles ruefully instead, and shrugs. “If Dragonblooded are half as passionate as demon lords, I can barely imagine how places like the Realm survive without being torn apart.”

Sasi wriggles up against Keris, pale skin sliding over darker skin. “There are two ways to maintain power,” she says clinically, and somehow Keris knows that Aiko has heard similar lectures. “Firstly, have such overwhelming power or force of personality that no one can conceive of a rebellion that succeeds. Few will be tried, and the few that are tried will be despairing. This can be done with the Realm to the peasants of the Blessed Isle, but not among the houses.

“But second, ensure that those who are not on top see a future in things as they are. A chance to rise that will be thrown away if you lose imperial favour; a position given to you that you can lose if you do not obey. Even, for the peasants, the fact that your loved ones will suffer if you do not pay your taxes. And in the case of the Houses, there is the Deliberative to play for, a source of power that could stand against the Throne. And the Third Scarlet discovered that when the Houses are united, the Imperial Throne is unsteady indeed.

“And it was that second way that helped my homeland endure.” She kisses the back of Keris’s neck. “Because the Houses always had more to gain by playing within the rules - and even when they lost out, why, they would get another go later on. But now, without the Empress, everyone sees they have power to gain, and much less reason to play by the rules. I’m sure this is familiar to you.”

There’s a pause. It drags out for a long moment before Keris turns around, her expression uncertain. “I... yeah,” she mumbles half-heartedly, and almost leaves it at that. But sheer incredulity is enough that she can’t resist commenting. “I mean, in theory, yeah. It’s not like it’s gonna happen to the Realm, though.” She laughs a little at the absurdity, trailing off awkwardly when Sasi doesn’t.

“Keris, my love, my sweet one. The Realm is crumbling. My _orders_ are to ensure that it does, and that the Deliberative does not arrest its decline. Do you know, even now, the Sesusu stand in direct violation of Imperial Law on the number of auxiliary legions they have raised and are using them to conquer an empire in the north west... and no one is trying to stop them, because they know that if they try to order them to disband them, another tatter of Imperial authority will fall apart.

“Do you remember that play we did together? That play with Elanora, the imperial soldier, her clothing falling apart, wandering through the streets?”

Keris nods.

“That, Keris is the Realm. The Realm is Elanora, and as each tatter falls off her, it reveals more and more of her that she would rather keep hidden.”

A thousand tiny rasping susurrations fill the room as Keris’s barbed quicksilver-thicket of hair forms knots all up its length. “Y-yeah, obviously,” she says with another forced laugh, pulling away and sitting up. Her stomach feels jittery all of a sudden, uncomfortable and full of wasps. Her hands come up to her chest and she twists her newly-healed fingers together as her shoulders tense. “We’re weakening it, pushing it back to the Isles, I know that. But it’s not gonna... it’s the _Realm_. It’s not gonna just _fall_ , or _stop_. It’s too big.”

“Keris...” Sasi trails off. “Keris, you’re Haneyl’s mother. I know you can understand this. She did, the very first time I explained it to her. I thought you knew. As she put it, the Realm has spread its roots through the threshold to draw in nutrients. If you cut the roots, the plant dies.”

“I know, but... I mean, that’s how it works with plants, the Realm’s just... it can send...”

Keris’s fingers twist together tighter. Her leg is jogging too, a nervous tap-tap-tap of her bare foot against the floor sending little tremors through the soft mattress. She knows about gang bosses. If you can’t beat them in a fight, stealing their food to weaken them won’t work either. They’ll just beat someone up and take more as soon as they get hungry. The only way to get away with defying them is to do it behind their back and never let them realise people are slipping away from their gang or stealing from them. And if they _do_...

“Can... can we not talk about this?” she begs. “Why... why don’t I tell you about Haneyl instead!” She smiles, fist clenching around her wrist to settle her restless energy. “I told you she’d regrown as a little girl, but not what she’s doing. Her keruby are looking after her, and she seems really happy being fed all the time and watching plays and getting to boss around the big people-”

Sasi’s brow creases slightly, but then she smiles. “I’d love to see her like that,” she says. “They’re so adorable when they’re small, and I’ve only known her as a teenager.”

“... hmm.” Keris frowns. “I... hmm. I can’t bring her _out_...” She considers for a moment. “I might be able to weave a dream with her in it and pull you in? It wouldn’t be as big or nice as the Lap of Luxury, but I think I could pull Haneyl in too. Or, well. Make a Haneyl-doll that looks like she does now, and let her control it.” She tilts her head, calming further as she considers the problem. “Let me think about it for a scream or two. And, uh. Remember that she won’t remember much. Including all your lessons.”

Sasi kisses her. “At worst, I’ll see her in a year, I suppose. And we’ll have a few easy days together. Just you, me, and some time with our adorable misfit family.”

* * *

The peace lasts less than a scream before Keris is summoned to Lilunu.

She exists in a state of constant half-wince as she answers the summons along with Sasi, Aiko and the twins. On the one hand, a summons might mean that Lilunu has cooled off enough to want to fuss over Keris some more. On the other, she may have looked at the painting again and all the brassy scars still on Keris’s body - they’ll take a season or so to fade completely, such is their number - and got mad again.

It’s not a situation of “good option, bad option” so much as two bad options. If she’s still mad, she’ll be summoning Keris to yell at her some more, which means guilt. But if she’s not...

... if she’s not, then between Zanara and Iris, she’ll probably want to ask Keris about what happened. And Keris still isn’t ready, or even _able_ , to talk about that.

At least Lilunu might have been able to resolve the fight that Zanara has been having with themselves over whether to feel guilty about what they did, she thinks glumly as they’re taken by palanquin towards the centre of the Conventicle. Her left hand grips Sasi’s in what’s probably a too-tight grip, and she fills the ride with coaxing soft red hair down the mercury-wire scaffold that sprouts from her pitted skull. At best guess, she’s maybe a quarter done, and she sort of wishes Lilunu had left her more time. Sasi’s mind-hands run through Keris’s hair, stroking her scarred scalp with a thousand butterfly kisses and soothing her as they approach their destination.

Lilunu’s tower has changed; burst like an overripe gourd, turned into a flower of crystal and ice. It spirals in a conch shell that exploded at the top, fanning out with elongated petals that cast countless monochromatic rainbows of Ligier’s light.

They are greeted at the door by a short woman dressed only in a harness, whose body is so totally covered in tattoos and piercings threaded together with red silk that she almost looks like she is dressed from a distance. But her silver-and-ice horns give away her nature; she’s the wave cherub Keris left with Lilunu, all those years ago.

Keris blinks at the recognition, then smiles in delight, her nervousness abating in favour of seeing one of her keruby looking so good. “Well hello,” she greets. “It’s good to see you again. You look wonderful!”

“Thank you, Lady Dulmeadokht,” the mercurial artisan says. “This humble servant of Bruleuse greets you.” She beams at her ultimate maker. “And you think I look wonderful?” She does a little twirl, to show off her fully decorated form. “I did it for my lord Bruleuse,” she says, with an adoring sigh.

“I’m sure he appreciates it dearly,” Keris smiles. She raises a playful eyebrow. “Is he the one who holds your heart?”

“Oh yes! Lady Lilunu let me choose who of her souls would hold my heart, and I think he is the most romantic with,” she licks her lips, “with his song.”

“A fine choice,” Keris complements. “I remember meeting him myself, and his music is truly beautiful.” She pauses, glancing at Sasi... but, well, that ship has already sailed, and did so a while ago. “Though I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting all his siblings. Maybe we can talk about them later. But right now, I think Lady Lilunu wants to see us.”

“Yes, Lady Dulmeadokht.” She leads Keris and Sasi to an eternally spiralling pole, which turns and turns and takes the little niches on it upwards. Stepping onto it, they rise up through the conch-flower, and after cutting through a hall of mirrors that show countless reflections of the three women, she leads them out onto one of the petals.

Zana is there, her statue showing off her new, older appearance at the centre of a tailor’s workshop and a Realm-style open-fronted robe hangs from the motionless statue. Next to her, Lilunu works on a strange, silver-masked white garment for Nara, who chatters to her as it is fitted.

“Lili!” Kali cheers, delighted as always to see her godmother. “Lili Lili Aunty Lili! Look at me look at me I went swimming in mama’s garden Lili and I caught a fish and it was _this_ big and Aiko and Ogin were there and Aunty Sasi too and mama’s hair is silver and you have a silver face there and we’re here to see you!” She shifts into tiger-cub form and bounds across the floor, cannoning happily into Lili’s ankles as Ogin slinks over to climb onto Zana’s statue and Aiko hugs Sasi and Keris’s legs.

Lilunu scoops her up, spinning her around. “You have a happy soul, little one,” she tells Kali, smiling. “I wish I could go through life with the same unrestrained cheerfulness you have.”

Ogin sighs. “Most people could not manage that, Lady Lilunu,” he says. “I can’t and I’m her brother. I have to sleep.”

“Did you have a nap, Lili?” Kali asks, shifting into a hawk to enjoy being held up in the air. “You were all cross but now you’re happy again! Cally says naps are good for being happy again when you’re cross.”

Ogin nods seriously. “She said Hanny should go sleep around instead of getting cross and shouting,” he contributes, mimicing Calesco’s voice with uncanny accuracy. “But that wouldn’t work. Hanny doesn’t like sleeping anywhere except beds. So she wouldn’t want to sleep around the house.”

Keris winces. She remembers that fight from back before the Shuu Mua expedition. She’d been kind of hoping Ogin hadn’t, though at least he seems to have misunderstood it.

Lilunu sighs, holding Kali at arm’s length. Her hair is back to its most common red, and while her nails are coral-like, she shows more than just Kimbery in her nature. “Yes, I suppose I did have a nap,” she tells the little girl. “And yes, I have calmed down.” She looks over at Keris. “It’s good to see you back on your feet. And that you have feet to be back on.”

Iris pops up from Lilunu’s shoulder, nudging side her painter’s smock, and exhales a wide-eyed face that then is replaced by a smile at the sight of Keris.

“It’s... good to be back up again,” Keris agrees ruefully, and bows as an afterthought. “My lady Lilunu. Hello Nara, hello Iris.” She blows a pair of kisses at her children. “Working on a robe and mask, I see?” Aiko’s little hand works its way into hers, and she squeezes reassuringly without calling attention to the girl’s timidity.

Lilunu nods. “I was speaking to Zanara, and she said that it wasn’t fair that he couldn’t be out and about as much because of how mean, horrible humans react on seeing him. So he needed something to wear so they could spend their time more equitably.”

“I-we think that she-we just thinks I-we’ll get more of the blame if you don’t think that I-we’re the good one,” Nara contributes with a sigh.

Keris grimaces at that. It hasn’t escaped her that Zana was the part of Zanara who did... what they did, in order to bleed out the poison that was at serious risk of permanently crippling their big sister. And if Zana was the part who was doing it out of well-meaning concern, that makes Nara the part that... wasn’t. The part that wanted those gifts of the Silver Forest for themselves, and stole them from Rathan just as shamelessly.

Nara had certainly been the one who hadn’t felt as guilty, in her tenth soul’s fight with themself. Keris doesn’t remember much from the aftermath of her maiming, but she does remember that.

“Maybe so,” is all she says, in neutral tones. “Well, I’m glad you’re getting a present. It looks gorgeous, that’s for sure. And Iris? Have you been helping too, sweetheart? Are you feeling better after getting lots of hugs from Lilunu?”

Iris hurls herself out of Lilunu’s skin, becoming a kali-tiger before she lands and then springing up into a girl who runs face-first into Keris’s leg. There’s incoherent fire-babbling, but Keris doesn’t need to interpret it to know what her foster-daughter is saying. She’s very, very happy that Keris is better and... oh, yes, there is the tug on the arm.

Iris wants headpats from Keris’s left arm.

Laughing, Keris supplies them, combing through Iris’s black locks that try to cling to her fingers and brushing tears away from her face and rubbing under her chin until Iris gives up on physicality and becomes the dragon again, winding around Keris’s arm and settling back into her favourite position. With her head on the back of Keris’s hand and her flame held at the pulse point of her wrist, Iris wriggles happily under the skin and lifts her head up just enough to let loose a crooning jet of happy, formless flame.

Keris drops a kiss between her horns and shoots Sasi and Aiko an encouraging smile before moving in to hug Nara and tentatively embrace Lilunu.

“My hair’s still a work in progress,” she murmurs. “But it’ll be back to normal soon, and then we can put all of this behind us.”

“Will we?” Lilunu whispers.

Keris bites her lip. That nervous energy bubbles up again, and she glances back at Sasi for support. “It... it’s over, isn’t it?” she tries. “Once the scars fade it’ll just be... part of the past. Lesson learned.”

“You nearly died, Keris,” Lilunu says. “And if you say ‘lesson learned’... what was learned? Really?”

Keris’s eyes flicker over to Kali and Ogin. They’re occupied with Zanara and Aiko at the moment, and Ogin is sneaking glances at the mercurial artisan’s complex tattoos, but Keris knows all too well how good their hearing is, and this isn’t a discussion she wants to have with them in the room. Or at all, really.

Sasi slides in. “You know, I think Iris and the children might want to be away from the boring work-related discussion. Lady Lilunu, might there be a place your servant could take them which would be more entertaining?” She looks to Keris for confirmation.

“I don’t know the layout anymore after this many changes,” Keris shrugs. “But... yes, that sounds like, um, a good idea.” She suppresses a wince at the passing thought that the two women are cornering her alone, and suppresses the urge to ask for Iris to stay as a defence against topics she doesn’t want to talk about. It takes a bit of quite wrestling with herself as Lilunu gives quiet orders and a few hugs, and before Keris has fully mastered herself, she’s distracted by Iris slipping away to keep an eye on the children.

The door shuts behind the artisan, leaving Keris trapped. She gulps again, and chews on the streak of red in her quicksilver hair. Lilunu likewise chews her lip. “I think we’re going to need to be very relaxed,” she mutters. “Especially me. We need the baths. And drinks.”

Keris nods fervently. “Especially for me, too,” she admits. And then, because it’s worth a shot even if she knows it’s not going to work; “Are you sure we have to talk about it at all?”

“Keris,” Sasi murmurs into her ear. “You can’t run away from this.”

“Yes,” Lilunu agrees, with a very Haneyl-ish flick of her hair. “Not least because I care about you and I don’t want something like this ever happening again!”

Thus, the ladies decamp to the latest incarnation of Lilunu’s baths, which this time are a shallow pool that stretches out under the green sunlight, ringed with white flowers which grow from solid crystal, and thickly wreathed with steam. The ground underneath is sparkling crystal, and Keris wonders if there are people from below who can see them... but honestly it’s likely that Ligier’s light would strike down anyone who tried to get an eyeful of his beloved.

Lilunu pours herself a drink, and sinks back into the piping hot water, pushing the floating tray over to Keris. “Ahh. That’s better.”

Keris sinks in with a sigh of her own, loving the weightlessness the water gives her and the ease with which it lets her move. Rather than a single drink, she snags a bottle of metal-brewed spirits and drains a cup’s worth as an opening move. The smooth burn down her throat distracts from some of the building anxiety.

Some.

One of the bottles floats over to Sasi, borne in unseen hands, and soon followed by a cup.

Her head spins - from the heat or from the drink, she’s not sure. For a moment, Keris feels like Kit. It’s like Kit is there, sitting here in this unreal, uncanny pool. Sitting here, naked with two incredibly beautiful and casually inhuman women.

Both of them catch the flinch.

“What’s the matter?” Sasi asks, her clay cup floating in front of her.

Keris opens her mouth, closes it again, and chews on her hair for a good half a minute as she tries to find a way to answer that. Dulmea’s music echoes in the back of her mind, but her mother seems as helpless to know how to broach the topic as Keris herself is.

“Do...” she eventually starts. “Do you remember who I was when we met?”

Lilunu sips. “You were you,” she says.

Sasi shakes her head. “You were a feral little thing. A feral little thing who couldn’t keep her eyes from my chest and who stammered and turned bright red when I got changed.”

Keris blushes, and her eyes dip, proving that some things will always stay the same. But her expression swings back to pensive a moment later.

“They took me back to that,” she croaks after another brief struggle. “Or... not even that. Past that. When you met me I had Dulmea. I was... tamer, nicer. Grander. Already starting to be Keris. They took me back to when... back to when I was _Kit_.” She gestures vaguely at her head. “She’s still up here, like... like paint on the brushes from the last thing the artist worked on. I’m... it’s hard to remember who I am sometimes. Or maybe too easy. Maybe I’m remembering too much of who I am.”

The look on Sasi’s face has to be mild horror. At the thought of an even more feral Keris.

“I don’t understand,” says Lilunu, and it’s clear from the look in those ever-changing eyes; she _doesn’t_. She’s always been her.

Or, no. But when she’s not been her, it’s because someone else took her body and used her as a vessel to speak through. It’s because her flesh is a stitched-together thing of immeasurable complexity and sometimes things go wrong. She hasn’t changed like Keris has changed; hasn’t grown like Keris has grown.

“I don’t- I don’t know if I can explain,” Keris says helplessly. She downs another cupful of demon-liquor. It helps unwind the tight feeling constricting around her throat. “I can’t... I can’t go through what they showed me again. N-not in words. Not... I’d choke.” She blinks away tears - of frustration or fear, she’s not sure which. “I can’t,” she whispers, hugging herself. “Not on my own.”

Sasi shakes her head, and sidles over to take Keris’s hand. Let her lean against her shoulder. “I’m not going to tear it out of you,” she says. “I won’t do that to you. It’d hurt just as much. Worse.”

Keris shudders. Huddles into her.

Takes a shaky breath, as an idea forms.

“Could...” she murmurs. “Could you play? A following duet, to lend me your orchestra? I think... Dulmea was there. For all of it. If she was leading, and I j-just followed her chords, and you gave me backing for my melody. I might be able to... to not think about it. I-if... I mean... mama?”

Sasi considers this. “There are no shadows, but... ah.” She takes her cup, and crystal chimes. With a snap, it’s ablaze, and then Sasi starts to sing. Except the flame changes from orange to black, and there’s shadows rolling out from the smoke; shadows that cling to the women under the mad green sun on Malfeas; shadows that loom much too large without something to cast them.

Keris’s skin prickles with the presence of Seresa, and out of the corner of her eyes she can see the feminine shapes of the Things That Lurk In Shadows that descend from her. These not-quite demons start to play.

“Mama?” she asks quietly, and Dulmea’s voice is there.

“Of course, child,” she murmurs. “You will have to supply the words - but you can do this. I know you can. Listen to me, and let the lyrics come without thinking.”

She starts to play - a lilting, tender song almost like a lullaby, and Keris mirrors it instinctively. She gives Sasi and Lilunu one last look as she downs the rest of the bottle.

“Are you sure you want to hear this?” she asks. “It’s... not a happy story.”

Sasi just gives her a look - a look which speaks of her own past miseries she’s shared.

“I care for you, Keris,” Lilunu says, leaning over to rest her hands on her legs - as her hands are moving. “Even the bits you think I don’t want to see.”

Keris sighs, and closes her eyes, and accepts that this is happening.

And as [the melody](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvatteT5Mxw) swells, she shuts her eyes and loses herself in the song, feeling the images begin to form in the shadows as Sasi follows her lead. The first few words that come make her smile - because of course. Why else would it be a lullaby?

Where else to start, but the very beginning?

_“Where the saffron slowly grows,  
“‘midst the mountains and the snows,  
“Where the sun gods carved on high  
“Stare forever through the sky,  
“There a little girl was born  
“On a Wood’s Resplendent morn...”_

((yes i know i am trash, hush ye))  
((Also, I am actually going to roll for this, lol. Persuasion + Expression? And does Sasi give me bonuses?))  
((Yes, and Sasi is a +3 equipment bonus))  
((Okay, so that’s base 4+5+3 Time-Strung Harpist+1 bonus {rich history}+3 Sasi+3 stunt=19. I’m channelling Love of Art for 4 more, and throwing 9 Kimmy ExD at it, as well as 4 autosux from Pelagic Muse Artistry. And Keris will also - mostly unintentionally (again), be enhancing herself with MOE to stop any social attacks against her, and Adoring Fans Biomagnification. So that totals at 32+4 autosux, for... *drumroll*... 24+4= **28 sux**.))  
((Social influence contained in the performance can basically be summed up as “please see the truth of me and love me anyway”.))

She drifts, as she plays, barely aware of what she’s singing. It’s a performance to make emperors weep, she knows that much - and she can tell in a vague sort of way that Lilunu and Sasi _are_ weeping, as the lullaby becomes a childish song of joy that turns to sharp chords of fear and fire with the burning of Baisha, as sinister minor chords take over for the nadir of slavery and then flute up into the fierce motif of escape.

There are other things playing too, Keris realises from the dim place she’s retreated to. Not just Dulmea - and not Sasi’s second-hand orchestra. This is a backing choir of her own; insectoid shadows who serve as a chorus for her, provide flutes and drums and keys to add to her harp. They feel like things from the Meadows; their shadowy music containing a core of piercing, painful light as they tell this agonising truth. Perhaps Sasi has stopped playing altogether. It feels like the song moving through Keris is all that exists now - meeting Rat, the duel with scarlet fever, Chen and everything that came with him - and as painful as the half-heard lyrics are, they’re freeing. Catharsis has a freedom of its own.

Maybe that’s what Calesco was truly aiming for, when she drove those words into Keris’s back in the ruins of Chir.

By the end, Lilunu is in tears - and Sasi is not, but she’s holding Keris so close it’s like she never wants to let her go. As the music ends, the shadows disperse and all that is left is a lingering haze over the beautiful baths.

“Oh, Keris,” Lilunu sobs, sweeping her - and Sasi too - up in a tight embrace. She has more hands than she should, and they’re all petting and hutting Keris.

Keris is crying too. In fact, she realises as she comes back to reality, she’s been crying for a while. Her cheeks are stained with tears, and her eyes are raw. Her fingers ache from playing. Her throat is sore from singing.

But that doesn’t matter. Because she’s told them everything, and they love her still. She’s shaking, and hurting a little, and she’s exhausted from the music.

And she’s loved.

Lilunu won’t let her go. “They hurt you so much,” she says, “the gods, the people - the awful, awful people. I... I didn’t know. I mean, I knew that so many of my brave princes and princesses have endured so much, but you... how do you keep going, Keris? How do you not let something like that consume you?”

Keris nuzzles into her. “Din’t think ‘bout it,” she sniffs. “Ever. Not till C’lesco reminded me. A-and they weren’t all bad. Not Rat.” She sniffs again. “Not Gull.”

“Rat was the one from... from Matasque,” Sasi says softly.

A few shaky breaths are necessary before Keris can answer that. But eventually, still clinging to Lilunu and keeping a tight grip on Sasi’s wrist where her girlfriend has her arms around her, she nods.

“The Mask of Winters had him,” she says in a tiny voice. “One of the first of Thorns. A-and he’d been trying and trying to get free and he couldn’t ever, an’ if he couldn’t get out of something I knew I weren’t smart enough to get him out, an’ I hated him a bit for leaving an’ he saw what I was an’ said Dulmea was like the Mask was and he’d take her away, an’ I was so mad and he was so _unhappy_...”

She buries her face in Lilunu’s neck and just... breathes for a moment. “S-so,” she finishes when she feels ready to come up again. “I... I set him free. And took his body in, and forgot all the anger I had ‘cause he din’t deserve it, and... and I had Rathan and Nara from his memory and Ogin from... him.”

Her lip wobbles a little. “Rathan looks so much like him, sometimes,” she sniffs. “When he was getting us back here, after I was hurt. I almost thought it was him.”

Lilunu eventually manages to somewhat get a hold of herself. “I don’t want you to ever be in danger again,” she whispers, gleaming tears spilling into the water. “Not when the world has done so many horrible things to you, not when you make so many beautiful things, n-n-not when I would have lost Zanara and Iris t-t-too.”

Keris attempts a smile. “I have to go back to Creation sometimes,” she says apologetically. “I have a job there. A duty. But...” She bites her lip and looks up at her mentor with vulnerable eyes. “That position you offered me. Mistress of Ceremonies. Is it still open?”

“Of course it is!” Lilunu explodes, then seems to doubt herself. “You... you mean it? You’ll be here. With me, for at least some of the year? Safe?”

“I think I could really use some time being safe every year,” Keris nods shyly. “And it’ll help you at Calibration. What you asked, earlier. About how. It _did_ consume me. At the end there, on the streets and... going after Kasseni. Dulmea was the one who saved me, who pulled me out of that. And you sent her to rescue me. You saved me.”

She hugs Lilunu around the waist, resting her head above her heart.

“So I want to help you,” she mumbles. “As much as I can. I’ll be your Mistress of Ceremonies, an’ we can make beauty t’gether, where it’s safe away from faeries and fighting and _Firewander_.”

“You know I’ll be here for you if I can be. To help.” Sasi shifts around, so Keris is trapped between the two of them in a reassuring circle embrace. “I did enjoy our performance together. So if you need any help...”

Keris nods, and has to stifle an unexpected yawn. Between the inner strength she put into the song, the emotional exhaustion and the strain of playing for... well, she’s honestly not sure. It could be anywhere from a couple of hours to half a scream. But regardless of exactly how long it was; the combination is enough to make her drowsy as all the tears settle and tiredness creeps up on her.

“I’ll ask,” she promises. “If I need help, I promise I’ll ask.” She butts her head back, gently pushing against Sasi’s. “Love you. Both’f’you.”

Lilunu sighs. “And look at you, falling asleep on your feet. I’ll look after the children,” she puffs up her chest, “as their godmother. Sasimana, I order you to take her back to bed and treat her with all the kindness she deserves.”

Sasi sniffs, and wipes her water-wet eyes. “You don’t have to order me to do that,” she says, sounding slightly hurt.

Lilunu pauses. “Then please do,” she says, after a moment. “Sorry, I’m just so worried...”

But if they say anything else, Keris doesn’t hear it. She’s already asleep.

* * *

Keris recalls that there was a formal investiture when she was promoted to the head of her division. It had been in front of the Unquestionable, and she had knelt and accepted a symbol representing the Anarchy and surrounding areas. Taken ownership of it. But in the end, it had been something that was almost a formality because there were more than a few directors and some of them weren’t even Infernals - there weren’t enough. Minor directorships had demon lords or even prominent first circle citizens managing the role.

By contrast, this role of Mistress of Ceremonies is one of the few implements of Lilunu’s power that is only hers to control. She wants to make a very big deal about things. With Keris looking - and this was a direct order - “as fabulous and beautiful as possible” when she is invested with the title in a grand ceremony. After all, Lilunu had said with a smirk, Keris needed to watch and learn to see what she would need to be organising.

Which is why Keris is waiting in an antechamber, afraid to touch anything for fear it would muss the incredibly delicate arrangement of her outfit.

It’s a paean to everything Hell has given her. The undershift is a wisp of blood-red silk harvested from her patron’s wake, decorated with wind-embroidery so subtly different in shade that it almost can’t be seen. It clings tight to her curves and accentuates her hair, and gives her an air of danger to remind her peers that even in this peaceful role; she is still a killer. Voluminous petticoats of woven shadow hug her waist snugly, hinting deliciously at a thousand seductive sins with every flash of the velvety darkness under them. They fill out her inner dress; a thing of beautiful lace spun from Kimbery-pearls that’s all coral reds and pinks with tinges of violet. The waves the lace is patterned into blend with the wind beneath them, mixing together in beautiful swirls and curving lines that cry out their wearer’s beauty, and how sinful it would be to tarnish it.

And then the overdress; a mix of grey and silver for the forests she follows with separate pieces for back and front and the two halves of her skirts so that the underlayers can show through. These are heavy - because unlike the blood-silk of her shift or the pearl-thread of her underdress, her overdress is pure woven moonsilver, alloyed with Szorenic mercury in parts and dulled by immersion in the Swamp for others. So fine is the weave that it doesn’t fray where it’s been slashed into root and branch patterns that expose the lace and embroidery below, and so delicate are the crafts that have been worked on the metal that it feels like thick, stiff cloth.

Of course, it’s not merely the three-layer dress Keris has to deal with. She’s weighed down by jewellery in mingled gold and silver tones - necklaces, broaches, bracelets, rings and chains; each with magic of its own to enhance her beauty or project her rank. Her regrown hair is braided and threaded through with vitriol-orichalcum, and the gold tones blend with her silver feathers as they climb past her beloved kris-earrings and adamant-studded collar until they reach the circlet of vitriol-electrum on her brow, inset with eleven great opals that glitter with inner fire.

And even atop that, there is more. For she wears a mighty praise-banner to the Yozis as a shawl; Ligierian fire writ on cloth-of-brass in a standard that would rouse a war-host to utmost loyalty were it flown as a standard. There are gossamer veils stretching out behind her in a diamond-studded train that stretches as far as her hair would, and opal-coloured flower petals hovering around her that will catch the light and sparkle beautifully.

Her right arm is clad in a shoulder-length glove of a thousand wafer-thin scales that reflect the uncanny colours of the Beyond from the corner of the eye, while her left is bare for Iris. Her face glows in her essence-sense from the power in the paints and oils - each worth more than their weight in jade - that have been delicately applied around her eyes and lips and the scars Adorjan left on her, and the air around her is perfumed by scents that shroud her in seductive mystery and allure. There are even - and she knows Lilunu must have done this out of love - nods at her human past included; kris-stitching on the undershift, saffron flowers amidst the designs on her overdress and many-layered Harbourite folds in her petticoats and skirts.

In her right hand, she holds an ornate baton of gleaming brass; a jewelled ribbon coiling from it - the official sceptre of her position. In her left, she bears an opal key the length of her hand, with which she can demand entrance anywhere within the Conventicle Malfeasant. Clad in such wealth and grandeur, Keris barely recognises herself in the mirror, and the servants of Lilunu’s workshop bow to her or stare in awe as though she were a goddess. A vision. An Unquestionable in her own right.

((Keris is enhanced by All The Charms And Artifacts. All of them. She is literally wearing enough Artifact dots to beggar a satrapy. And not a small satrapy, either.))

Sasi slips in through the door. Her mouth actually hangs open at the sight of her girlfriend. “Keris! I know you wanted to surprise me, but I couldn’t resist peeking and... you! You look astonishing. How much did you _spend_ on this? Is this all your winnings from your gambling?”

“Um, no,” Keris blushes, and slowly turns away from the mirror in shuffling little steps so as not to muss anything until she’s facing Sasi full-on. “I _was_ going to delve through my hoard for some things to decorate my amulet’s pretty-mode and maybe do some weaving too, but, uh, Lilunu said that wasn’t nearly fancy enough. And then dragged me into her workshop wardrobes, and then into her _personal_ wardrobes that she keeps for her Calibration outfits. And then she called her tailors in and spent three screams dressing me up in different outfits until she was satisfied.”

“Darling, I am incredibly jealous. The only reason I can contain myself,” Sasi says wryly, “is the knowledge you have volunteered to serve as Lilunu’s dress-up doll whenever she wants.” She brushes her own little black dress, which is midnight demon-spider-silk, off-the-shoulder and cut to mid-thigh. “You make me look positively peasant-like. I’m not used to that feeling, and let me tell you; I don’t think I like it.”

“I definitely understand why Piu was a bit scared of her even in art-mode,” Keris agrees. “I was honestly worried for a while that she was going to keep me in there for the rest of the season. Um...” She purses her lips, looking down at her train. “I think, uh, if you stand just here and make sure not to catch yourself on my outer-dress, I could give you a kiss to make you feel better? Just be careful not to smudge my makeup. I don’t know how much it cost and I don’t think I want to.”

Sasi shakes her head, but the air ripples and Keris feels the sensation of a kiss. “I’ll be there to help you out of that dress, after all this is over,” she promises. “But I’d rather not be hung from my ankles for ruining your big day. Dragons know you deserve something nice. After... after everything.”

Keris stops herself from biting her lip or pulling any tendrils out of her heavily-braided hair, and brings her ring-bedecked fingers together instead. “How, um...” she says nervously. “Lilunu said... a lot. In the baths and also in the, uh, dressing-me-up. But you just hugged me a lot. A-and I know you love me, I’m not doubting that, but... you were never all that comfortable with our, uh, class gap. Talking about street stuff, I mean. You’re... I mean, I don’t mean it as an insult, and I love you for it, but you’re kind of a Bag. A really Baggish Bag. That’s not your world and you don’t like thinking about it, and then I dumped everything on you all at once.”

She pauses, feeling the quiet pulse of essence from each of her rings as her left hand plays over them. “How are you handling it?” she finishes tentatively.

Sasi leans against the wall, hands folded in front of herself. “It’s... changed who I thought you were,” she admits. “You told me you were a dashing thief, living alone on the streets, stealing from the rich.” There’s no condemnation in her voice, but there’s perhaps an empty space where it would be if Sasi wasn’t hiding it.

Keris slumps a little. Her head dips.

“I was, for a while,” she says. “When I was working for Chen; Rat and me in our own place. And... and it was easier. To pretend that was how it all was; those good years. Before I fucked it all up and wound up alone with Gull, and then... fucked it all up again, and wound up alone for real. I-it hurt less. To pretend that it’d just been Rat, and to not think about...”

She has to stop, because tears will definitely mess up her makeup, and there probably isn’t time to reapply it.

“... not think about how he went missing,” she says after a moment, picking her words carefully. “About what I was really like back then. Dulmea gave me a new life, and it was easier to just do what Eko would say to do. Leave it all behind me and keep running. Keep laughing and stealing and living in the present. Forget my sorrows instead of letting them weigh me down.” Her eyes flick upwards. “When we first started. You loved me because I made you smile. I... I don’t think Kit Firewander could have done that. I don’t think you’d have liked the Blue Killer, or Gull’s... keeper.”

“You... loved her.” It’s not a question.

A bittersweet smile. “She was all I had, by the end. And then I didn’t even have her. If I’d been better to her, maybe she wouldn’t have been out that day.”

“I probably wouldn’t recognise you before...” a hand gesture takes in Keris, “... before the Chrysalis remade you.” She shakes her head. “You wouldn’t recognise me.”

Keris huffs a little laugh. “I think I’d always recognise some part of you.” She smiles wistfully. “And you might. A little. Haneyl is that part of me; from back then. She just... got all the chances Kit never did. Not until Dulmea.”

And then there’s the question that Keris really hoped would never be asked.

“Do... did you... were you attracted to me because you saw her in me?”

She takes a deep breath, and lets it out in a sigh, looking up at the ceiling of this lavishly-decorated changing room. She’s not entirely sure, but she thinks it might be the equivalent of one she’s met Lilunu in before - in a situation much like this, a brief meeting snuck in before a big performance. It’s just that now, she’s on the other side of the exchange. And with her new position, she likely will be again in the future.

Sadly, the announcements and paeans outside are still ongoing. There’s no convenient summons to let her out of answering.

“... I don’t know,” she says eventually. “At the time... I mean, the first time I saw you, I wasn’t. I didn’t know you at all beyond the surface, and on the surface you couldn’t be more different. You look younger than she did for most of the time I knew her, and you’re Realm trueblood where she was Nexan and you’re highblood-Bag-posh while she was a Firewander street-witch. But then everything with Orange Blossom happened, and I got sent to Matasque and saw...”

She swallows.

“... and then next time I saw you, I was coming off breaking things with Orange Blossom and trying as hard as I could not to think about anything to do with _him_. And I first met Gull while I was running with him. He’s the one who got us working for Chen at all. So I was... I was pretending she’d never existed even harder than I was when I first came to Hell, or on the streets before it.”

A tiny shrug. “That was wrong of me. Wrong ‘cause she didn’t deserve to be forgotten, and ‘cause maybe I should’ve grieved her properly before jumping into Orange Blossom’s bed to try and forget, and ‘cause you deserve a proper answer now that I can’t give you. I’d locked her so far down under the surface that I dunno how much of _us_ was you helping me and being there for me and doing everything so gorgeous and polished and clever and scary and smooth, and how much was being in Nexus again and... seeing something I’d lost.”

“I see.” There’s a whorl of discoloured air as Sasi massages her temples. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. But... no. What we have now is... what we have now. You’re you. You’re Aiko’s Aunty Keris. A princess of Hell. I... I still have problems seeing you as... as the woman you talk about. The cheap slum-harlot, gang thug and serving girl. Though... mmm. I can see the half-trained priestess. That bit, I always... when I met you, you were brighter in certain ways, better taught than just a thief would have been.”

“I gave up the street rat for Sorcery,” Keris says softly. “You remember that, I think. That was where the last of Kit slipped away, on that island after Nexus. The priestess, though...”

She pulls a face. “I might have to swallow my tongue and ask Orange Blossom if she can find a proper joyful priestess, when I next see her. Finish my training, get initiated and all. Maybe... maybe even set up a branch of them in Saata.” She smiles wistfully. “I could call them my Saatan Gulls.”

Sasi chuckles at that. “Just find one yourself.” She gestures around the room. “After all, you have managed to worm your way into having an extraordinary latitude for doing your own thing. As long as you can justify it as being for your role as Mistress of Ceremonies, you don’t have to rely on _her_.”

That makes Keris blink - and then, slowly and wickedly, smirk.

“You just so happen to be right, there,” she murmurs. “Sasi, my love, I think this position is going to suit me just fine.” Her ears prick. “And speaking of this position... care to help me out of this changing room? Moving in all of this is hard, and I think we’re coming up on my cue to come out and dazzle them all. Be sure to hurry around and get a good place to watch from once I’m ready!”

With a snap of her fingers and the air-twisting of mind-hands, the door swings open. “After you, my sweet mistress,” Sasi murmurs.

Keris sashays out, braids and pendants swaying in time with her hips to a rhythm that perhaps gives Sasi a little more of a view than is strictly necessary. Once she’s out in the corridors it’s easier to move, and she carefully waves Sasi off as she takes her place on the platform that will raise her to Lilunu’s side. Iris has been given her own role in this display that she’s been lovingly coaxed through, and she’ll be leaping from Lilunu’s skin to put on a little aerial display with some rainbow fire before settling back on Keris’s arm where she belongs.

Deep breaths, Keris thinks to herself as she keeps a vague ear on Lilunu’s speech above her and waits for the platform to start its ascent. Deep breaths, and don’t worry about anything. Lilunu has it handled.

“Mama?” she murmurs. “When you first came to me, in that cell. Did you ever dream we might end up here?”

“No, child.” Dulmea can be heard smiling. “I thought you’d be an assassin for them - a killer who would one day get unlucky. Someone who took orders. Not this.”

“Well, of course! She’s my mama so she’s the best!” Haneyl chimes in, childish voice piping.

“Haneyl is here and she’s sitting on my lap because she wants a view of the spectacle.”

“Everyone has to love you, mama! And love how amazing you look!”

“They will, sweetheart,” Keris smiles. “I’ll make sure of it.”

And as she hears Lilunu’s speech winding up, she does; daubing herself in the beauty of Kimbery and the reflected glory of the Silver Forest in readiness to be projected out through the essence-projectors lighting up the sky above the Althing. She’ll be radiant. She’ll be enviable.

She’ll be loved.

The sounds of the crowd are a wall of noise that hits her like a hammer. The stands are packed with tens of thousands of demons, and there are lords and princes among them. The sky is full of fire that casts its light down on her. But it’s Lilunu who’s there for her, dressed in her beautiful emerald dress armour, her painted body visible through the translucent crystal. And it’s Sasi who’s there in the viewing box. And it’s Zanara who’s beside Lilunu, covering what - and who - they are in their silver-masked white robe.

“Smile for the lovely people,” Lilunu murmurs to Keris. “And I’m going to work you like a dog.” She raises her voice. “Kneel, Princess Keris Maryam Dulmeadokht. Kneel and abase yourself before the Conventicle Malfeasant, Voice of the Yozis.”

Gracefully, Keris sinks her one knee, bowing low with her hair swept back.

“Unquestionable,” she says clearly; her words caught and borne out on the essence-fields of the stadium. Zanara’s many-coloured Isle-petals wreath her words, guiding her manners along perfect lines and artful flourishes. “I am your humble servant, here to command as you wish.”

She reaches down, and opens Keris’s jaw, easing out her tongue. Suddenly, there’s a needle in her fingers, and the world slows to a crawl as the red-tinged needle descends. Keris forces herself to stay still. Lilunu is her mentor. She won’t hurt Keris. Not seriously. The only pain she’d ever inflict is the kind to empower her student - like the bliss-soaked agony of the Chrysalis, the drug-blurred ordeal of her painting, the Yozi-flux of Iris’s birth.

Lilunu wants what’s best for her.

Keris closes her eyes and lets the Voice of the Yozis have her way.

There’s a brief spike of pain as Lilunu pierces the muscle, and then before the wound can close up, she has a piercing tipped with a gem that glows with the ever-shifting, inconstant radiance of Lilunu’s own eyes.

“Know this,” Lilunu declares, “Keris Dulmeadokht is now _my_ Mistress of Ceremonies.” Her voice is firm, clear. “Her tongue is mine; when she gives you orders that pertain to the Conventicle Malfeasant, she speaks with my voice. Those who stand in her way stand in my way; those who aid her aid me. So says Lilunu!”

Keris’s stands, and Iris flares from Lilunu’s shoulder as they’ve practiced; looping and swirling through the air trailing opal flame before diving down to settle on her outstretched hand and sink into it. And as she does, Keris unleashes the light of her soul in full; the red-and-silver whirlwind lifting her veils and fluttering her shawl as the totem-mandala of her souls spins into being behind her.

“As Mistress of Ceremonies,” Keris calls in strong, ringing tones. The piercing gives her voice a reverb; a weight backed by her new rank as she speaks. “My first order is this! Let us celebrate! For the cause of Hell, for the Unquestionable’s glory, for the dominion of the Yozis! For the Reclamation!”

Lilunu clasps her hands together. “And as my first order to you,” she says, “dance for the onlookers. Dance to show them beauty, as we lead into revelry!”

And, gleaming like an earthbound star with poise and charm and beauty, drawing every eye to her with irresistable grace, Keris whirls away and loses herself to the music.


	16. Chapter 16

Keris stirs from slumber. Stirs from slumber, head pounding, feet aching. She considers that statement. No, not feet. Something else.

Everything. Everything aching. It feels like little demons are inside her head, playing drums, and she seriously considers it - but wait. That’s her heartbeat. Which means she must be hungover. Very hungover. And for her to be hungover... how much did she drink? And why?

Oh wait. Giant party. Lilunu very happy. Yuula there. Drinking occurred in very large volumes.

Keris only then remembers to open her eyes, and finds that the reason her legs are hurting more than the rest of her is that a very naked Sasi is asleep on top of them. Very naked, and covered in smeared very expensive makeup, which Keris last remembers being on herself.

Oh yes. And this isn’t her room. She... thinks Lilunu gave her a room in her central spire? That or she just passed out in Lilunu’s bed. Naked. With Sasi. Hmm.

She is far too hungover for this shit.

Groaning - and then hastily shifting to quieter whimpers when that proves too loud, she sticks a probably-hair appendage into her... other hair, and roots around plaintively. After a while, and a few increasingly-desperate whimpers, Dulmea takes pity and guides her to her alchemy lockbox.

The hangover cure burns as it goes down, and she feels the added mercury ooze its way into her bloodstream. But the relief is immediate; like cool water bathing her skin and washing away the pounding ache between her temples.

It does less for the ache everywhere else, but flaring her caste mark gets her upright, and some judicious use of pressure points and acupuncture starts her essence circulating again. Then she stops.

The limb she used, on closer inspection, turns out not to be a hair tendril. Keris stares at it for a while, a complicated expression on her face. It’s long and thin and silver, and looks more like a jagged, gnarled branch than anything that belongs on a human body. Thorny spikes and offshoots jut from it here and there. It’s coming from... she gropes backwards and feels with a hair-tendril... her spine, bending around in front of her with distressingly acute hairpin joints. The end of it does split into manipulator-appendages, but they can’t be described as fingers. They’re more like five razor-tipped butcher-talons that come to vicious points. There’s nothing safe or comfortable or peaceful about the limb - not a single element of it is anything but twisted, inhuman and lethal.

“I thin’ I pr’fered you when y’was preten’in t’be my legs,” Keris tells it blearily, making the talons open and close experimentally. The _thinness_ of the limb; the utter lack of flesh on it, makes it look almost skeletal. The fist looks like finger bones crossbred with butcher’s knives.

Making a face, Keris tosses the empty vial back into her hair and draws the branch-limb back into her bloodstream. Experimentation with her hair taught her that Szorenic limbs can extend out to be much, much longer than her hair - longer than her Lance’s chain-form, even - but all the same, she thinks this will stay a mostly-combat-only trick. She never wants to hold her babies in those murderous claws, even if they’re under her control.

Downing some water to wash the awful taste out of her mouth and feeling generous and benevolent in the luxurious not-hurting-anymore, Keris gives her still-comatose girlfriend the same acupuncture treatment she gave herself so that Sasi won’t wake up wanting to die, then tucks her properly into bed and scrawls a quick note for whenever she wakes up. 

She’ll probably get a thank-you for that, later. Sasi looks like someone put her through the wringer. Keris recognises her own mouth’s handiwork written in kiss-shaped bruises and priceless lip paint all across Sasi’s chest and neck - as well as, uh, lower areas. But from the way her muscles feel when Keris gives her a quick root-massage, she must have spent almost as much time dancing and singing as Keris had; with far less stamina. She has vague memories of having to literally carry the taller woman to bed after she swooned during... something public? Maybe a smaller-scale re-enactment of their little performance in the arena.

That gets a cringe. But not quite as much of one as it would have, before Chir.

With her lover taken care of, and feeling somewhat more human, Keris sets herself to looking around. She remembers Lilunu gifting her this place, now. She’d ordered how she wanted it decorated - and it’s telling that she’d apparently settled on “Harbourite-style”. Perhaps nobody else noticed - but she knows what she’s looking at.

Everything is _soft_. The ceiling is covered by fabric drapes that dip down between the points where they’re attached. The walls are covered by draped curtains; belted close to the walls about halfway up but pinned further away up at the ceiling, so that the room seems to narrow as it rises. All of them are richly embroidered with scenes from Creation - yes, she remembers doing one herself as an example. Or maybe a bet, proving she could weave faster than... some citizen or another? A spider thing with a human face. She’d won, Keris is pretty sure of that much.

It looks like she’s in something that’s half art gallery, half chieftain’s tent. And it’s not just one bedroom - it’s a whole suite that would put Kasseni’s Shogunate apartment back in Nexus to shame. Keris wanders barefoot and naked through the plush-carpeted rooms, staring around in awe at the gifts and offerings that countless citizens thrust upon her during the festivities.

She also winces more than once as memories strike. Had she really made an official decree that nobody was allowed to be wearing more clothes than Lilunu for the duration of the party? And that statue she’d commissioned of the Maidens of Fate kneeling before the fetich-souls of the Reclamation, what had prompted _that?_ Not to mention...

Blanching, she doubles back to the bedroom. No, yeah, it looks like she _did_ give Sasi a tattoo. Of... well, Keris isn’t sure, but from what she can piece together of how they’d gotten to it, the woman getting... intimate with a demon in vivid detail across Sasi’s back is probably meant to be Nemone.

Keris goes ahead and gets rid of that while Sasi’s still safely asleep. Hopefully her love won’t remember that particular request. It was pretty late in their cups, so the odds are in her favour. Stretching languidly and throwing on a silk robe from a wardrobe nestled between a couple of mountainside-hangings, she runs a quick lap of the suite until she finds what’s probably the exit and sticks her head out into the rest of Lilunu’s tower. If she can find a servant, she can probably have food and drink waiting when Sasi wakes up.

The divide from her front door - which is a curiously soundproof curtain - to the rest of the tower is so stark Keris almost flinches. She steps out of a world of softness and cushions and rugs into shimmering, nacre-tiled corridors that echo like the sound of a shell held to one’s ear. It’s so bright out here, from the greenness that reflects off every surface, that she shields her eyes.

“Milady?” There’s a glum-sounding voice from the... oh, it is a demon there. On a stool outside. Keris had thought it was just a pile of rags. “Is something the matter?”

“Too bright,” she mumbles, and waves at the demon as she retreats back past the curtain. “Come in, please.”

The demon follows her in. “What is my lady’s suffering and how might I take it away?” asks the veiled figure, the bat-like membranes between its long fingers rustling in the quiet.

“Urgh,” Keris mutters. “Food and drink, for a start. And the whereabouts of Lady Lilunu, along with...”

She pauses. Examines the creature closer. Something about it is stirring her much-abused brain into recognition somehow. It takes almost a minute of blank staring before she realises. It’s reminding her of a glum Calesco.

And when she tastes its essence with green-glinting eyes...

The tar clings to her senses; she tastes it, smells it, touches it. But there’s a gleam of light in there, so deep inside she can barely hear it.

It’s Calesco. But it’s not all of Calesco. It’s Calesco in the same way that Elly, Saji and Rounen smell like Haneyl - but not all of her.

((Enlightenment 3, Calescoid essence.))

It takes longer than it otherwise might have. But things eventually click together.

“... you’re a kerub,” Keris says slowly. “The... the little mezkerub I left with Lilunu.” She frowns. “You’ve matured. But... not into a breed I know.” This is the first time she’s seen a new maturation occur for the first time _away_ from one of her souls - or herself, if she includes Rounen. Unless it's not new? Are there others like this in the Meadows? She _has_ been sort of distracted of late, but she’d have thought Dulmea would have mentioned something.

“I was,” it says glumly. Under so many layers, she can’t exactly tell whether they’re male or female. “But I... chose to become like this. To protect others from... from having to think about bad things. Milady.”

That has Keris raising her eyebrows. It sounds like it had been the same with her as with Vela - realising her Happening was a lie. But where Vela had embraced the truth and decided to show it to others, this little one had chosen to shelter others from it.

Interesting. Very interesting. ‘Dulmea?’ Keris thinks. ‘See if you can find her siblings in the Meadows, would you? I’d like to know why we missed them.’

Out loud, she smiles kindly. “That sounds kind of you. Could you fetch a food platter and some drinks - non-alcoholic ones - for myself and Peer Sasimana. And I need to know where Lady Lilunu and my children are, as well as be filled in on the events of the festivities last night.”

Mistress of Ceremonies. Her new role comes with a lot to do, and Lilunu hadn’t been kidding when she’d said she was going to work Keris hard. Reviewing the celebrations is probably a good place to start before going to see her.

“If you will, milady.” One long-fingered, membranous hand reaches out. “You suffer. I can take the pain.”

Hesitating only briefly, Keris steps closer and takes it.

Dark, oozing gloop squeezes out of Keris’s pores, and flows into the mass of clothing and veils that is this demon. Suddenly, Keris’s headache is gone. And she hears their “Ooof” of sudden, acquired pain.

“Gods- are you okay?” She darts forward and catches... her? She thinks it’s a she, as probably-she stumbles. “You didn’t say you were going to _take_ it; I’d have been fine!”

“No, no, milady.” Under the rags, Keris can feel that they’re so thin, bones like a bird. “I can take it. It is better that I suffer so no one else does.” The veils crumple, like she’s smiling under it. “It’s better this way. It’s how I help Lady Lilunu.”

Keris feels herself go cold. “You’ve... don’t tell me you’ve been taking on her chakra-knots?” A second’s thought dispels that notion. This demon is a little stronger than average, but she’s still no more powerful than Kali or Ogin. A Lilunun chakra-knot would kill her. She’d explode.

“No, milady. The lady’s pain and discomfort.” The demon smiles wider. “Like you do, but in a different way. She is happier when you are around.”

A slow, uncertain nod. “Alright. And... no, of course you’d do it willingly, wouldn’t you?” Keris gently hugs the frail, shrouded creature. If Vela is a cruel magistrate, then this is... a witch, perhaps? A mercy-witch. “Thank you, then. For helping her, and for helping me. What’s your name?”

“Kyrie, Milady.” The... witch drops into a curtsy, fabric slithering around her with a sound like insect wings.

“Kyrie.” Keris smiles again. “Pass on a message about the food and drinks and see if you can get me those reports about last night, then return here with them. I’m... happy to see you again.” And if she remembers right, mezes are one of the smartest kerub breeds; only a little behind szels. She can probably help Keris work things out.

The demon vanishes off, limping slightly - a reminder that Keris’s feet aren’t hurting, either - and not too much later, demonic servants arrive with the refreshments.

Sasi is still fast asleep. Kyrie is taking longer than Keris might have hoped, so after she has a small breakfast, she’s left with not much to do.

Well, okay, there’s a lot she could do. Like go into her wardrobe and try on clothes. And there are a thousand other distractions. But she has a slightly guilty feeling she should be doing more.

Well, it looks like Sasi won’t be waking up until... Keris checks her breathing and has a quick taste of the drugs still present in her bloodstream. Yeah, she’ll be out for a while.

Now seems as good at time as any for what they talked about, then.

“Haneyl, sweetie?” she says. “Do you want to go into a dream with Sasi and me like we mentioned?”

There’s a scrambling sound. “Mama!” Haneyl says fiercely - or at least as fiercely as a small child can manage. “Grandmama wouldn’t let me near the window for most of the time! She made me go away after we saw the party start! Before you even ate!”

“... well,” Keris says diplomatically, promising many, many thank-yous to Dulmea whenever she next gets a chance. “There were a lot of grown-up things going on, sweetie. But you saw my first dance, didn’t you? And now you get to see Sasi! I’ll make you a little cutting that you can possess in the dream I become for her, okay?”

“I don’t think I can,” Haneyl says dubiously. “I think... I think Calesco does the dream stuff.”

Keris purses her lips. “We’ll try it,” she says. “If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, you can trade letters and I’ll let you choose a present for yourself out of what I got given by citizens yesterday. Okay?”

“Okay,” Haneyl says slowly. “Mama. Mama. Why... why do I feel so... weird about having missed the party?” She hums to herself. “I think I... I would have really had fun. Like, before I got small and sick.”

“You probably would have, sweetie,” Keris sighs. “But... well, some things that you would have liked when you were grown up, you wouldn’t like as much now that you’re little. It’s like... like a fruit tree. When it’s fully grown and has figs on all its branches, it wants lots of birds around to eat them and spread the seeds. But when it’s just a little sproutling poking through the soil, it doesn’t want birds around yet, because it’s got no fruit for them to eat. You need to wait until you’re all big and grown-up before you have parties like that, okay?”

“Hmmph.” It’s a very cute, sulky noise. “I grew a tree and I had fun!” she declares. “So I don’t get it. Now hurry up! Do your thing!”

Chuckling, Keris shucks her robe and collapses into an armchair across the room from Sasi. She closes her eyes and feels her skin drop loose and empty into the seat as she plunges down into the darkness of her inner world’s Dream.

This time, the construction is easy. She’s only going to be giving them a meeting place - and she’ll need to spend a lot of energy on Haneyl’s avatar - so she doesn’t both going for anything big. Instead she summons soft fabric under her feet, and spins that out into carpets and hangings and drapes, until she has a replica of her suite of rooms hanging around her. Then she closes her eyes, concentrates hard, and coughs up a seed that she grows into a sprout, then a sapling, and finally a little pale-skinned dryad with long grey hair and dull green eyes.

It’s... unsettling, to see the limp little copy of her daughter; empty of life and with no fire or light in her eyes. Hoping that this is going to work, Keris brushes a kiss across its forehead and tries to throw a rope of dream-stuff back up to the waking domain; Dulmea’s Tower or Haneyl’s Tree.

Maybe it’s because of Haneyl’s nature related to the... flesh-stuff. And the shaping and control of it. And then Adorjan is blood and... well.

Well, Keris feels somewhat queasy as the puppet swells, twists, and turns itself inside out - and from the blood comes a new figure, rising up and dripping in gore. It’s Haneyl as... well. As Keris thinks of her. As she’s known her. Curvaceous and with a feral edge to her beauty.

She opens too many eyes, and closes all of them save the two in their right place. “Ma-ma?” she says in the little girl voice.

It hurts to see her little girl like... like she should be. But not herself. And Keris remembers, too late, that Adorjan brings pain and this dream is woven from the Silent Wind. She winces. “Ah. Hello, sweetie. Um... it looks like the dream gave you your grown-up body here, not your little one.” She helps her up, and weaves some dream-clothes to covers her modesty. “How does it feel?”

Haneyl lifts her hand - or tries. Instead, too-strong muscles nearly spin her around and she hits Keris in the face, then collapses to the ground. “I don’t like this,” she wails.

“Hey, hey hey hey,” Keris works her jaw - that had been _considerably_ stronger than little-Haneyl had thought she was - and helps her into an armchair. “Just... just sit still, sweetheart. Breathe for me. Eat something.” She’d included the food when she wove the dream, and she hands Haneyl one of the trays to calm her down. “We’re just here so you can talk to Sasi, aren’t we? So you don’t need to do much moving around. It’ll be okay, I promise. Shall I bring her in here? I’m sure she’ll be eager to see you.”

Haneyl snivels. “I don’t like being big,” she says, clumsily blotting at her eyes with her sleeve and only occasionally missing her face. “I don’t like it.”

“I know, darling. You can be little again when you’ve had a talk with your mother. And I’ll let you pick a present anyway. Hmm?”

Mentally, Keris reaches out to the bedroom Sasi is lying in over in the waking world, builds tension in the dream, and releases it. She feels the shift in the bed as a woman surfaces, and kisses Haneyl on the forehead. “She’s just arrived, so I’ll go get her while you have the rest of the tray, okay? You can use your hair to eat - that’ll probably be easier than your arms, because it’s not changed size as much.”

Leaving her daughter to it, Keris hastens through the suite to find Sasi and fill her in. What she gets, however, is a frisky, dream-drunk Sasi who immediately pounces her as soon as she enters the space in the dream.

“... heya cutie-pie, girl of my dreams, beautiful,” Sasi murmurs, between kisses. She continues to say things as she makes an determined effort to get Keris’s dress off, but they’re all in High Realm. They sound fond, though.

In retrospect, Keris considers, this might have not been the best time to do this with Sasi.

“Sasi - _Sasi!”_ she says, shaking her. “Sasi, I love you too, but we’re dreaming and Haneyl is here. Little-Haneyl. You wanted to meet her?”

Sasi blinks at her owlishly. “Wait. Is this you, you?” she tries. “Or is this some mean dream? ‘Cause I wanna make looooooove to youuuuuu~” she sings.

Keris is reminded, intensely, of Seresa after about two glasses of wine.

“It’s me-me, Sasi,” she says as patiently as she can. “Can you... can you _please_ sober up a bit? Somehow? I do love you, and I’ll happily spend some more time cuddling and... other things, when we wake up, but can we have some family time first? Bringing Haneyl into the dream... didn’t exactly work the way I thought it would.”

She’s feeling very glad she chose to have Sasi enter the dream several rooms away from Haneyl. What with all the hangings and drapes and sound-muffling curtains in here, it means Sasi’s enthusiasm hasn’t reached their daughter. Keris can hear her working her way through the snack tray and calming down a bit as she gets better control over her newly enlarged body.

With a huff which somehow exactly matches young Haneyl, Sasi pouts at her. “Party time isn’t family time, Keris,” she whines, as she pinches the bridge of her nose and tries to focus on Keris. She gives up on that, closes her eyes, and Keris feels the pressure of her unseen hands. “Tha’s better,” she says more easily, unseen hands lingering where they really shouldn’t be. She pinches Keris’s bottom.

“I’ll be good with our baby if you’re _very_ good,” she murmurs.

Keris swallows with a dry throat. “I- I will be very _very_ good later,” she promises, and means it. “I already made sure you wouldn’t wake up w-with a hangover, a-and there are drinks and food w-waiting for you, s-so, um...”

She squeaks, and sends Sasi as disapproving a glare as she can under the circumstances. “L-look, um. I tried to make Haneyl a little-girl body like she has at the moment in my domain, but it grew up into her usual one. But she’s still little-Haneyl inside it. So she’s a bit, um, off-balance.” She’s horribly aware that she’s blushing hotly - and that they’re still sitting on a bed.

“Well, then, I’m just going to have to give you a tongue-lashing later for being so thoughtless as to do this now,” Sasi says, eyes still closed. She leans in, and kisses Keris. “But I’ll do this for my darling girlfriend, because I’m jus’ the bestest best!”

Caught halfway between trepidation and eagerness, Keris points the way to Haneyl and follows as Sasi puts on a robe and sweeps through. She’s already regretting her choice of timing for this - and her lack of control over the elements of the dream like Haneyl’s body. But calling it off would only make things worse, so... all she can do is follow in her lover’s wake and face the music.

Even drunk as... well, a Saatan Immaculate monk, Sasi can still make an entrance. In fact, she makes more of an entrance than she usually would, because she accompanies striding in through the door with a towering, dramatic fanfare played by shadowy figures, and a white spotlight appearing to illuminate her and Keris.

“Haneyl, my baby girl! It is me, your mother! And Keris, your other mother!” Sasi declares to the world.

((oh my god sasi))

Wincing a little, Keris hastens forward to slip an arm around her waist. “See, sweetheart? Sasi came to see you! Why don’t you tell her what you’ve been doing in the Swamp while you’re recovering?”

Haneyl’s face only moves slowly, like it takes some time for her to move it. “Mama?” she breathes. “I... remember you. You were... I think I... I spent time with you.” She grits her teeth, and violently shakes her head. “I don’t remember everything! I hate it!”

Keris sees her hair flutter as Sasi feels her daughter’s face. “You sound so young,” she says. “Oh, poor baby! You must be having to grow up again! That’s awful!”

“You’re getting there, aren’t you, darling?” Keris says, laying a hand on Haneyl’s. “Don’t reach too hard for it, it’ll come in time. You’ll be fine.”

“I don’t like being ill,” Haneyl whines.

“It’s awful, isn’t it!” Sasi insists, sashaying over and perching on the arm of Haneyl’s chair. She hugs Haneyl with one arm, holding her close. “My poor baby girl! But you remember all the good times we had together?”

“No! I just told you I don’t!” Haneyl sounds close to a tantrum. “But... I... Kal... Calesco? No. She’s my... my _baby_ sister.” She takes particular pleasure in that. “But... Kal-something.”

“Kali?” Keris prompts gently, wary of Haneyl fainting again.

“No! She’s my even babier sister, I can’t believe you don’t remember that. No, she’s... also mama’s daughter and also my little sister. Kal... aska?” She looks to them for confirmation.

“Kalaska, yes,” Keris confirms. “She’s one of Sasi’s souls, remember? You used to trade letters with her.”

“Yes! I told you so!” Haneyl crosses her arms, and nearly knocks Sasi off the chair with the clumsy motion. “She should come out to play here too!”

“She can’t,” Sasi says, even before she picks herself up.

“Why not!”

“Because...” and there’s the pause, the pause that would never have happened if Sasi was sober. “Because it’s Keris’s dream. I’m just here.”

Keris’s eyes flick over to her. “She could come out to play _outside_ of the dream, though,” she says, carefully neutral.

“No, she can’t.” And it’s the same Sasi voice she uses to tell Aiko to go away and play with the other children when she wants to talk with Keris in private. What Keris thinks of as her ‘mother’ voice, even if it is somewhat drunk. “She can’t come out to play.”

“Why not?” There’s a thread of steel in Keris’s voice, underneath the deliberate calm. “She’s a little girl, too. Not much older than Aiko. I’d quite like to meet her - to say thank you for all those nice letters she wrote to Haneyl, at the very least.”

“Keris, I don’t want to have this conversation.”

“Maybe not, but it’s a conversation we haven’t been having for a long time now.” Keris is more focused on Sasi than on Haneyl now; turning towards her as her hair spreads. “You said she was a sweet little girl, back when you told me about her. I gave her that fox painting, remember? What’s wrong with her coming out just for a little while, in Hell where it’s safe?”

Sasi glares at her - no, not glares, but the feeling of pressure from her mind-hands is like being glared at. “I am not talking about this. Not with you and not in front of our daughter!”

And again, she’s drunk. There’s a note of desperation there that wouldn’t be there if she was in control of herself. Desperation and... fear?

((... rolling... hee. Oh Sasi. This is one place where TLA works against you. A lot. Rolling Keris’s Sasi Principle against Temperance - because as much as Keris loves her, the _teach_ and _hurt_ clauses are the ones pushing it right now.))  
((Sasi - 3.  
Temperance - 1.))

Keris’s hair ripples, and she glances at Haneyl. “Well then maybe you’ll talk about it _with_ our daughter. Sweetheart? Do you remember the letters Kalaska sent you? Do you remember what you told me about them, when we were cutting back the garden in An Teng?”

Haneyl frowns. “I... argh! It was... it was...”

“This is nonsense! Keris! Let me out.” Sasi whirls on Keris. “I want to _go_. You can’t keep me here!”

“She’s scared!” Haneyl blurts out. “Just like mama is now!”

“Yes,” says Keris, her voice poisonously soft. There’s a way out of this dream. But it’s the curtain that leads to the rest of Lilunu’s spire. And Keris is between Sasi and the living-room door.

Sasi’s wrong. Keris _can_ keep her here. She might not have planned to have this out here and now, but if the ordeal at Chir and confessing everything again in the baths has taught her anything, it’s this.

She’s not that girl anymore. She’s not Kit Firewander. She’s moved past the Blue Killer; the savage feral thing that butchered Chen in his own home. She’s grown up since taking her anger at Gull’s weakness out on her with her fists. She’s left the street rat behind since killing Rat.

She can be angry with Sasi now - can _hurt_ Sasi now - and not go too far.

“Yes,” she repeats. “She is. She’s a little girl, trapped in a place with bigger, stronger cousins who she can’t get away from when they bully her. She’s a little girl whose mother loved her when she young, but got distant and started loving her other children more when she got older and wasn’t what she wanted. She’s a little girl who tries to hide how sad and scared and alone she is, because she knows it would only make things worse if she _misbehaved_.”

Sasi is usually a stone wall as far as reading her goes. But Keris knows herself, and she knows her souls. She knows how much of a window they are into her. And Kalaska, even from what vanishingly little Keris knows about her, says far too much about Sasi. Far, far too much. Sasi’s souls aren’t her children. They’re facets of her - faces she wears in different parts of her life.

Seresa is Sasi the partygoer. She’s mentioned La; Sasi the Yozi priestess. And the Pyrian soul; Sasi the scholar.

And Kalaska? The little girl who made herself a pet to hug so she wouldn’t have to feel so alone, and locked herself in a temple of laws that protect her?

It’s all too easy to see which part of Sasi she represents.

((Per + Pres, plus whatever charms you’re using to hammer this into the WP-depleted, not-sober Sasi))  
((Hmm. Does Prince of Hell Style... what am I saying; Keris has her trapped and cornered in a dream where she can’t run away and Keris is demonstrating her power by ripping into Sasi’s childhood traumas that she thought she’d hidden; of course it counts.))  
((4+5+3 Prince of Hell+3 stunt+9 Adorjani ExD {exposes the flaws, no-one expects her, take away sources of comfort}+4 Sasi Principle TLA autosux=24.))  
((TLA penalises Sasi’s MDV by 4. Seven Nights Shintai, amusingly, means Keris’s full “Appearance” is on display here; it’s an entire world of App 9 beauty. Keris is using Beauty Over Truth to make her words sound justified, Martyr’s Open Endearment to stop Sasi social-attacking her back, and Hidden Depths Temptress to double successes towards the action of “talk about this openly and let Kalaska out”.))  
((11+4 x2=30 sux.))

Keris hits her like a wave - not one of the little ones that lapped the beach where they holidayed together, but the kind that ruin towns. The kind that are like a sword of water that stretches out for miles to either side. Sasi crumples down, unable to stand.

“You- you don’t understand!” she shouts at Keris. “My... they’re not like yours! Haneyl is our daughter! But you can’t... that’s _not_ what Kalaska is! She’s something I have to keep away or it’ll ruin everything!”

But Keris is relentless. _”Why_ , Sasi?” she demands, standing over her. “I’m Aiko’s aunty, why not Kalaska’s too? What’s so terrible about her, in your eyes, that you need to keep her locked away and miserable? What do you think will happen if you don’t treat her _like your mother treated you?”_

“She is not a child!” Sasi glares up at Keris, eyes dry, lips thin with rage. “She’s no more a child than Seresa is! You don’t understand! You made your souls into children! I don’t know how you did but you did! She’s not like Haneyl!” She jabs a finger at the girl, who flinches away. “Haneyl is a girl who I’ve watched grow and learn! Kalaska is a... a demon! A fraction of me that I _hate_ , Keris! That makes me weak! That gets in the way and I wish I was rid of but I _can’t_ because I’m too damn scared of meddling with my sense of self for fear I’d go mad like you do!”

Keris lets that wash past her, and through her, and into her. She feels the rush of fury in response to the word _hate_ being pointed at a child come surging back up, and she grabs it like a striking snake; holding it tight behind the head before it can plunge in its fangs and inject its venom. Keeps it leashed and focused and controlled.

“You never tried,” she says cuttingly. “You dabbled in teaching her when she was young, and then when you got Aiko you stopped. Because you didn’t like what she said about you. Because you were scared to take any risks or grow yourself. Because it was easier not to. What does that make you, Sasi? Calesco tried to be a demon when she formed. She became my daughter because I _treated her like one_ , and _kept doing so_. Even when she said things that hurt me.”

She’s shorter than Sasi, but here in her woven dream-body she looms; beautiful and piercing and terrible.

“Seresa has grown. Not much yet, but she’s learning things; changing. When she first crawled free of you, there was nothing to her beyond decadence and vice - now, she’s got opinions. Not many outside her role, but some. You think your souls can’t learn or change, but they can. It’s just hard.”

Her eyes are fierce and bright and as hot as Meadow-tar.

“So give her to me, if you don’t want her. If you think she _gets in the way_ and you _wish you were rid of her_. Summon her out and let me take care of her for a season, or a year. Maybe she won’t change. Maybe she will. Either way, she’ll be out of _your_ mind where she won’t be a _burden_ \- and out of that too-small place where your other souls abuse her.”

Sasi is silent, dark, seething blackness leaking from her eyes in place of tears. “You don’t understand, Keris.” She’s pleading now. “She’s everything about me that’s ruined my life, the... the gut-clenching, squirming worry that... that ruined all the best chances I had. I want to be rid of her. I _do_. And you’ll see that side of me I wish I didn’t have and... and you’ll see how pathetic parts of me are. They’re not who you fell in love with.”

Keris kneels down beside her. The boiling heat in her eyes cools to gentle warmth as she takes Sasi’s face in her hands and wraps her hair around her shoulders in an embrace.

“Sasi,” she says softly. “I told you the very worst parts of me - the bleakest depths - and you loved me no less for them. You gave me our gorgeous, talented, _perfect_ daughter over there, and Vali, and even Aiko. You helped me in Matasque when I was running from Rat, you carried me through Nexus to get revenge on Kasseni.”

She presses a kiss to Sasi’s forehead. “I’ve seen you sly and clever and pulling strings behind the scenes. I’ve seen you strong and deadly and glorious with sorcerous power. I’ve seen you tired and grumpy and snappish at too-early in the morning. I’ve seen you fall apart completely when our plans go wrong and you panic helplessly.”

Lifting Sasi’s chin a little, she looks her in the eye. “I love you, Nemone Sasimana. I will love you until every star in the Malfean sky burns out and the layers of the City grind to a halt and the gods grow old and die at their games in Heaven. Nothing you can possibly show me will change that. I swear it.”

An expectant smile. “Now. I showed you the worst of my past. Show me the worst of yours.”

“You can have her.” It’s almost deliberately ugly, deliberately vicious. “I don’t want her back.”

Keris nods once, clamping down on the part of her that wants to _hurt_. She has what she wanted. It’s time to stop.

“I will hold you to that,” she says, and steps out of the way. “If you want to wake up; the way out is past the Iris-patterned curtain.” She needs to stay and do some damage control with Haneyl, who’s curled up foetally in the armchair, breathing in little hitching sobs. Sasi storms out, without a look back, and Keris is left to her weeping daughter; a little girl in a too-large body.

“I wanna go home,” Haneyl snivels in a tiny, awful voice.

Keris hugs her, tears pricking at her own eyes. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t want to have that fight now. I didn’t want to have you involved in it. I didn’t even want your body to come out like this in the dream.” She sniffs. “I’m sorry for all of this.”

“Why was she so angry, mama?” She clings onto Keris too tightly, and won’t let go.

“Because... because you were right, honey. She was scared. She was scared of talking about it, because it...”

Keris closes her eyes in pain. “Because... because Sasi-mama doesn’t... doesn’t like parts of herself very much. And talking about Kalaska makes her look at the parts of herself she doesn’t like, and which she won’t do anything about. And that hurts her, so tries hard never to do it, and she’s scared of anything that might make her.”

Keris knows the feeling. It’s how she’d felt about the parts of her life connected to Gull, before Chir.

“Why?” A child’s question, that fully grown Haneyl might never have asked.

“Because like Sasi said. People change and grow,” Keris says sadly. “And sometimes they change and grow into people who don’t like the people they were before changing. And Sasi’s changed very, very much since she was little, and got hurt back then in ways that never really healed.”

“Can you put me to bed and read to me?” Haneyl asks in a little voice. “I don’t want to be big anymore.”

“Of course,” Keris murmurs. “I’ll end this dream and come in to see you, and then read you a bedtime story, okay?” She spares a moment to worry about Sasi being there when she reforms - but Sasi is unlikely to still be in her suites when she does, Keris suspects. Though... might she have been furious enough to summon Kalaska and leave her there before storming out?

... she very well might. She kisses Haneyl on the forehead.

“I’ll see you soon, darling. No more big unwieldly body until you grow up.”

The body goes limp as Haneyl retreats from it, leaving Keris all alone in the dream. Which is, she realises, already starting to collapse as Sasi wakes up. Biting her lip, she lets herself rise again, borne up to fill out her skin and face whatever awaits her in the waking world. Sasi is gone. At least that’s something. And there is no Kalaska waiting for her.

There is, however, Kyrie, the robed and shrouded grown-up tar-cherub. “Milady? I have the papers you wanted.”

“Thank you, Kyrie,” Keris sighs, taking them. “I need to meditate for a while before I get started on work, but I may call on you for help sorting through these when I’m done.”

“Yes, milady.” She curtseys again. “I am here to ease your pains and relieve your burdens.”

She’s not like the other keruby Keris has spoken much to, and she can’t quite pin down how or why.

“It is the servility,” Dulmea says in Keris’s head. “She is acting much more like a serf - a well-off serf with a powerful master, yes, but a serf. Even the more obedient of your demons - like your Rounen - have an anarchic edge to them.” She sighs. “Do you want to talk about what happened?”

“I blew up at Sasi,” Keris replies glumly as Kyrie leaves. “I- wait, did you see?” Dulmea hadn’t been there when she’d swum down into the Dream with Eko. But then, that had been from within the Domain. Her music had still been in Keris’s head when she’d had that dream with Ney.

“I did, yes,” Dulmea says. “Your flesh becomes dream, but I am still here. A dream of a dream, perhaps.”

“... I had to say it,” Keris says. “You know that, right? You agree? It’s... I’ve been holding this in for too long, mama. A year or more. Kalaska doesn’t deserve the life she has in there - and Sasi is just hurting herself by keeping it buried.”

“She might be right.” The music is melancholy. “In that Kalaska is not a girl. She is a demon lord, shaped like a girl - and what you have done with your souls is exceptional and I think you do not understand how exceptional it is. Even with the newer ones, you have not been able to replicate it.”

“I haven’t tried, with the newer ones. Firisutu and Evedelyl and Sirelmiya... they’re different. They’re how I feel about things, not parts of me blended with parts of... something else. That’s what children are, so of course they’re my children.”

Keris makes a face. “And even if she is a demon lord shaped like a girl, so what? I’ve helped Seresa. I’ve helped...” She pauses. “... our other guest. Asarin’s happier since we became friends. Just because they’re demon lords doesn’t mean they can’t change at all.”

“Mmm.” Dulmea sighs. “But that might be why Sasimana had such a reaction to your remarks. She does not like it when you find things easy and she does not.”

“... I guess not.” Keris sighs. “Well, I’ll come in and tuck Haneyl in. Hang on. Is she in your Tower, or back at her Tree?”

“The tree, child. Her horse-demons took her home.”

Nodding, Keris sinks back in the armchair and projects herself into her Domain. She has a daughter to take care of before she can get to work.

* * *

Reading to Haneyl and getting her settled in bed takes about an hour. Once she’s done, Keris surfaces and looks through the reports Kyrie left her; skimming through the attendance of notable Unquestionable and citizens along with the reception the party had met among them, refreshing her memory of what had happened and - reluctantly - breaking down the more bureaucratic elements of costs and things in need of replacement.

((Cog + Bureaucracy, diff 3))  
((mou :c))  
((3+2 stunt+3 Kimmy ExD {discerning eye, vile art}=8. Enhancing with PoEU. 4 sux.))

This is part of her new job. And it is not going to be fun. Keris has realised that she has volunteered to be reading very, very boring paperwork on expenses and assets and stockpiles and deprecation on the scream after a party, and that Lilunu will probably take pleasure in finding things to hand her the morning after.

There are so many things she never realised were going on behind the scenes. Like the sheer volume of beer, spirits, wine, and other drinks. The stock records of chalcanth. Fortunately Lilunu has a full staff to handle the precise details, but the summary reports - gods, dragons, Unquestionable... there’s _so much_ in just the summaries. There’s mention of Quintus having eaten several serving staff while drunk, there’s damage to the arena from a brawl that’ll need fixing... yuck. Pinching her brow, Keris begins to call for Rounen - and then remembers that he’s back in An Teng helping Calesco play Little River.

“Dragon aides,” she mutters. “Mama, I need dragon aides here. Year-round, probably, even when I’m not. And I might task Zanara to spend time here when I’m in Creation. They’ll like being with Lilunu, and they can cover a lot of the surface-level stuff.”

Grimacing, she arranges the summaries on the velvet tablecloth that covers her desk. “Okay. So. This was... ruinously expensive, and if a tenth of this had happened in Saata I’d be screaming. But I dunno what’s usual for parties in the Conventicle. I’ll - urgh - have to ask Lilunu for some _more_ records to compare this against. Plus side; reactions seem to be good. Lots of gifts for me and Lilunu, most of the revellers went away happy, no big fights breaking out bar some kind of scuffle between Zabah and Nidamento... I think it was a success as a party.”

Keris sighs again and rubs her temples. “Right. I guess I can’t laze about here all day. I’m going to find Lilunu. Play me something relaxing? I’m gonna need it for the stress of all this paperwork.”

Only when she looks up does she realises there’s someone watching her, and has been for a while. Zanara, in their - his? - white robe and silver mask blends into the curtains and drapes so well that Keris didn’t register their presence.

She jerks. “Zanara! Sweetheart, I was wondering where- wait, how long have you been there?” She beckons them closer for a hug, wondering if it’s Zana or Nara under that impassive silver face. There’s no way to tell.

“Well, it’s really a question of how long I-we’ve been here,” Zanara says, a lilt in their voice that makes her think it’s Nara. “You weren’t doing very much for a long time, and you couldn’t hear us if she-we were doing things elsewhere while I-we waited.”

“... you were petrified,” Keris sighs. “That’s why I didn’t hear you there. Clever little darling. Did you see Sasi leave?”

“No. I-we missed that.” Nara - yes, she thinks it’s him - skips over, and vaults up onto her desk, swinging their white-shrouded legs. That silver face turns to face her, cocking his head, and Keris realises with amusement how Nara almost looks like Eko right now. “From the way you say that, something happened, mama.”

She sighs morosely. “We had a bit of a fight. Over Kalaska. But I don’t really want to talk about that. Come over here, give me a hug and help me have a look at these reports. They’re summaries of the festivals last night. I’m off to find Lilunu and talk to her about them in a minute, so you can be my Mistress of Ceremonies assistant.” She smiles. “You were certainly doing a good job of it at the investiture. Congratulations on that - and your debut of your pretty new robe and mask.”

Nara pulls back his hood, sliding up the mask, to show a face that looks a little like Rathan - if it wasn’t for the strange, orange cuttlefish-like eyes sitting in his face. He smiles, showing black teeth. Her youngest soul-child has grown up - he looks to be in his early-middle teens. “It helps. And it does hide who we are. Even the demon princes accepted we were one of Lilunu’s servants. We served drinks to Fossyi and the infested avatar-mouthpiece of Enali.”

Keris kisses him on the forehead and starts gathering up the papers. “That sounds like fun, fooling them so well. Were they pretty? Or boring?”

“It was interesting.” Nara’s smile has malice in it. “They’re _stupid_ , mama. Stupid and lazy. Especially Enali. He thinks he’s an artist, but what has he made in five thousand years? He was boasting about ideas that we all - not just us, but our brothers and sisters too - have already tested out and improved. He thinks his cruelty makes his art more beautiful, but he’s just doing it for himself.” He sidles up to Keris. “We could poison his insides and he wouldn’t even notice,” he wheedles.

He shrugs at Keris's disapproving look. “Oh well. But Fossyi is more pretty. He likes bugs, like Calesco. And a soul collection sounds pretty, like yours!”

“Huh,” Keris cocks her head. “Yeah, I’d heard about that. Doesn’t he live out near the Wings of Oramus?” She taps her lip. “Interesting. Might have an idea there, then.”

She sighs. “But that can come later. For now, work has me by the ankle. Is she-you with Lilunu?”

“Mmm.” Nara spreads his hands. “But you don’t really want to talk to she-us, mama. She’s being very tiresome about things that don’t really matter. Not like the fun things we can do together.”

The reminder of Zanara’s fight with themselves - and what had sparked it - is like a bucket of icy water poured down Keris’s back. Her expression wavers for a moment before she gets control of herself.

“... well, I was asking because I need to go see Lilunu,” she says once she can do so calmly. “So you can lead me to her while you tell me about what else you did at the party, how about that?”

Nara pulls his hood back up, and re-dons the mask. “Yes, hee. So, you know who was conducting the orchestra when you made your appearance? It was us!”

“Oh? I thought I recognised that musical style...”

The conversation lasts them nicely as they exit Keris’s soft suite of draped fabrics and plush carpets into the brightly-lit crystal halls of the rest of the spire. Keris keeps the topics to art and the events of the festival; too tired from her fight with Sasi to get into any other arguments. She’s trying to save that one for when Haneyl gets better and can contribute, anyway.

They find Lilunu in a hall of mirrors; a place where the walls and ceiling and floor all shimmer with Szorenic not-versions of the room. Steam hangs heavy in the air, as the Conventicle Malfeasant lies face-down on a massage table as one of her servants sees to her. From the statue on another table, Zana was enjoying the same thing - and Keris’s heart melts as she sees that the twins, Iris and Aiko are asleep in the warmth in a little pile of limbs. The room is lit by a dull red glow from the braziers of coals, and periodically the servants ladle more water on the coals when the steam thins out. Chuckling, Keris stashes the papers in her hair and goes over to press soft kisses to her babies’ forehead. Waving the servant away, she takes over the massage with a murmured greeting for her mentor as Nara hops up to sit cross-legged on his sister’s back.

Lilunu opens an eye. “Oh. You’re awake,” she murmurs. “Though it looks like you didn’t have time to get properly dressed and cleaned up from last night.”

There’s a clatter as Zana wakes and shoves the robed Nara-puppet off her and onto the ground. “Oh, come on, mother.” Her eyes; one red, one green, twinkle. “We’re all women here.” She flicks her long red hair, the two tones of red falling around her like a waterfall. “At least if I can keep the _asshole_ side of me down.”

“I was looking over the reports, my lady,” Keris says with good humour, easing tension out of Lilunu’s shoulder blades. “You did say you were going to work me hard. I thought I’d get an early start. And hello Zana. Did you have fun at the party?”

Zana gives Keris an arch look. “Once he-we let me-us out, yes. I got tipsy on _very_ expensive spirits. Though not as drunk as you. And ended the night wearing more clothes than you, Keris. You were being very affectionate to Sasimana and the audience appreciated it. I couldn’t compete with you for drawing attention. But I’m not jealous. I just made my own fun.” She’s using far more singular pronouns than usual, Keris notices. So was Nara. Their inner fight really is getting vicious.

Lilunu twists to frown at Zana. “I don’t appreciate you stealing from guests.”

“Mother, how could you accuse me of doing that? I was just playing Gateway.”

“With drunk demon lords. And tiles you decorated yourself.”

“It’s hardly my fault if they can’t hold their drink and wager things they shouldn’t.”

“Young lady...”

“I gave some of it back!”

Keris groans. “Who did you fleece, and how much for?”

“Obau, Zabah, Hartha and Claudia, to the sum of...” Zana considers. “You know, when numbers get _so_ big, it gets a little hard for some people to understand them. But suffice to say, I could probably have bought a... a city before mother ruined my fun.” She pauses. “Maybe two. Three at the outside, but that was only after Kuara piled in and made a _very_ ill-considered bet after I needled her pride a tiny bit.”

“That was why I called a stop to it and ordered things wound back,” Lilunu says firmly.

“She shouldn’t have bet if she didn’t want to lose!”

“Zana, you can’t card-shark the Unquestionable. Keris, help me out here.”

Trying very, very hard to suppress a smile - with dubious success, from the sound of her voice, Keris dutifully obeys. “You shouldn’t have done that, Zana,” she scolds lightly. “Out of interest, _how_ exactly...”

“Like mother said, Keris. I painted the tiles. Some of them were prettier, so they wanted to be used more. Like card suggestion!”

While still definitely disapproving of her youngest soul’s activities, Keris is suddenly and mysteriously struck by a very unconvincing coughing fit that takes a moment or two for her to get control of.

Lilunu sighs. “What am I going to do with you two?”

“P-put us to work?” Keris suggests, still trembling from the force of suppressed giggles.

Lilunu smirks. “Well, first you’re going to finish my massage. And then I’m going to take both of you and _dress you up nicely_ \- and no, you have no say whatsoever in what I have you wearing. And then I suppose I might as well start you on certain of your... exceptional duties.” She brushes back a lock of hair. “And I think the two of you should start being _very_ nice to me or I’ll be creative in what I have you wearing.”

The memory of three screams as a dress-up doll comes back, and Keris gulps. “Yes ma’am,” she says quickly. “One extra-good massage, coming up.”

* * *

Several hours later, a pouting Keris trails along after a smug Lilunu. She is not audibly complaining. Not quite. But she is close to it.

And _inaudible_ complaining is another matter entirely.

‘Seriously?’ she grouches to Dulmea. ‘Seriously, though? _Realm_ clothes? Realm _student_ clothes? I look like I belong in some kind of Bag academy! Some kind of rich Bag _Immaculate_ temple-academy!’

“I rather doubt an Immaculate school would clothe their students in praise to the Yozis, child,” Dulmea points out. “Nor would they be carrying reports on demonic festivities for their masters.”

Keris just grumbles back at her, wriggling to adjust how the stiff, awkward robes sit on her shoulders and balancing the unwieldly pile of papers and ledgers Lilunu has been handing to her in a never-ending stream since they left the dressing rooms.

She could definitely have made the clothes more comfortable to wear, Keris is sure. They _fit_ perfectly, of course, and they flatter Keris’s figure. But Lilunu somehow picked out the single style and cut that would most irritate her with how it sits.

... and, okay, being dressed up like a mockery of a young Dynast is smarting a little, too. Little River is different. She’s in charge, and her own dragon besides. _This_ , on the other hand, is just... demeaning. The worst thing is that Zana is strutting next to her, clearly owning the style. She has also somehow contrived to undo the top ties, show even more thigh, and despite the lack of anything to rip it with, tear the bodice area in several prominent locations.

Lilunu has either not noticed, or approves of such changes, because like one of the nuns Keris remembers from Nexus she’s leading her two acolytes up a spiralling ramp. “Now, my dears, if you take care to pay attention, you should notice that this is one of the areas of my flesh that should be open to no guests. If anyone who is not authorised to be here is found, this is a security incident that must be reported to Orabilis, and also to myself.”

Keris nods warily. “Right. So... why are we here?”

“Why, I can’t explain everything to you.” Lilunu gestures over the basalt ramp, the great gold-covered building at its peak which is topped with an emerald dome, the odd-outgrowths from the spire. “I do expect you to use your own wits, Keris.”

Sharp grey eyes narrow as they look around.

“... this is like Bruleuse’s lightless cavern, or Antifasi’s attic,” Keris guesses. “The residence of one of your souls. From... lord Ligier, and the King himself?”

Lilunu claps. “Well _done_ , Keris. No merit for you, I am afraid, because I had to prompt you, but...” the doors are up ahead, and she pushes these two vast, heavy, jail-like doors open with a simple push of her hand, “this is the home of Divisa. My... well, my eldest, at least to her claim.”

It is dark inside. Dark, and there is a second layer of walls. The outer shell is a place of scurrying assistants, heavily padded handlers, and gems and treasures and meat on trolleys.

Despite herself, Keris swallows nervously. Bruleuse was kind, and Antifasi adorable. Hermione is one of her daughters. But the Demon King Malfeas is known for his rage - and for his crippling at the hands of the Exalted Host. She’s not sure what she’s more afraid of. What ferocity this new soul might have... or what flaws.

“My lady,” she asks quietly as the assistants and servants part for them. “Lord Bruleuse said he was your Nurturing Soul. May I ask Lady Divisa’s title?”

Lilunu is silent for long - too long - as they make their way through the warrens of dark stone, only lit by irregular green-burning lanterns. There is a second door before them, and it is not glorious and it is not magnificent and it does not loom. It is small, and Lilunu has to stoop. What it _is_ is heavily secured, as the servants remove chains from the door.

“She is... my Dominating Soul,” Lilunu says quietly.

Keris lets that sit for a moment as the chains come off, sharing a glance with Zanara. She can hear the undercurrents of the implications therein, and none of them are happy.

Something to lighten the mood, perhaps.

“... so,” she tries hesitantly, “the part of you that gets her laughs out of dressing me up like something out of a scandalous Dynastic woodcut novel and having me trail after you all day?”

Lilunu doesn’t respond, and instead removes the last bar and opens the door.

The first thing to hit Keris is the stink. The stink of rotting flesh; putrefaction and decay. It is not well lit in this cell, though a certain measure of the green sun’s light makes its way through the emerald lenses in the roof.

There is a dragon in here. A dragon who for a moment seems to be a fair creature, with long, serpentine necks, graceful, almost gazelle-like horns, and gleaming scales.

And then the horror makes itself known. The bandages, wrapped around and around her, soaked black with blood. The right head is bare basalt bone draped with rotten flesh, and yet there is a bloodshot eye in it, staring at the newcomers. The swarming, squirming mass of stomach bottle bugs that crawl over this demon lord who - surely - must be on the edge of death. And the chains; the chains that hold her limbs and her wings down and collar her necks.

((Rolling Compassion... 2 sux.))

Keris’s hands go to her mouth. Eyes wide with horror, she looks at the... the _ruin_ of the gorgeous creature before her. Tears brim, and she trembles with sympathetic pain.

She’d expected some kind of flaw. Bruleuse is burned, Antifasi blind and deaf and mute, Hermione trapped in mirrors. But Bruleuse’s cavern is pitch-black save for his six glowing eyes. She’d heard the burns, but not seen the truth of them. Antifasi has no sense beyond touch, but in form she’s whole - a sweet young girl who laughed when Keris touched her. Hermione is trapped behind glass with every sense _but_ touch, but seems as hale and healthy as she can be at that remove.

None of them had prepared Keris for this. She sinks to her knees, unbreathing, her hair spasming behind her.

Zanara’s quiet embrace and cool hand on her forehead bring her back to herself, and let her stand, and step forward, and prostate herself in homage.

The dragon speaks, saying something clear and unfortunately incomprehensible in High Realm. Lilunu replies in the same language, though she hears ‘Ke-ri-si’ as a name - and then Zana introduces themselves. Also, annoyingly, speaking in High Realm. The brat has picked it up somewhere.

“Um,” Keris whispers, pitched for Zanara’s ears. “Zana? Help?”

Zana asks a question in her sweetest voice, and gets a response.

“So, uh,” she says softly, “Divisa says she doesn’t speak Old Realm. But,” she drops into Rivertongue, “I-we think there’s a technicality going on there. I-we think she doesn’t _speak_ it, if you catch my-our drift.”

Keris nods. “My humble apologies, ladyship,” she says in clear Old Realm, “for my ignorance of your favoured tongue. I am Kerisi.”

“Ah,” Zana translates, “she has felt your presence, recognised that there is at least one of her princesses who will associate with her... with her ruined household? No, her fallen dynasty.”

“Yes, my lady,” Keris agrees. “I have met Bruleuse, Antifasi and Hermione, of your dynasty. I care for them deeply.”

“Why?” comes the translation. “Why accept this ruination; these doomed and dying demon lords deprived of our due dignity?” Zana coughs. “That alliteration wasn’t me-us, either,” she murmurs to Keris. “She phrased things so that was the best translation. We think we like her.”

Keris thinks about her answer for a few furious seconds.

“My lady,” she says, choosing to bank on the truth. With a little framing, admittedly. “I was never noble. But I have known ruin, poverty and doom. I have been stripped of dignity and left close to death. It was terrible, but it was not the end of me. I was saved, and raised up to become a princess.”

She risks a glance upwards, her heart aching again at the sight of Divisa’s half-slain form. “I... I care for your dynasty because I have hope, my lady. Because I accept them, but not their ruination or their doom. Even if I can’t prove it can be changed or overcome... I can hope, and try to aid them.”

“We are flawed. We can only be flawed. There is no hope,” Zana translates.

Lilunu speaks quickly, her tone soothing.

“She’s trying to calm her down,” Zana says to Keris. “She’s worried that if she gets too deep into the... into self-blame, she’ll lose herself. Divisa is arguing back that she feels patronised and that such things have no point. She doesn’t sound happy.”

Grimacing again, Keris tries once more. “My lady, may I play for you?” she asks. She remembers, vaguely, the song Bruleuse sang with her in his cavern below the Conventicle - terrible shame and unbearable pain and a world that demanded they be hidden. There was no thought of change in that hymn - only acknowledgement of how things were, and must be. Patronising Divisa obviously isn’t working, and neither is offering hope. Understanding might be the best she can give.

“Dance for me,” comes the translation. “Let me see your worth so that even if you will cling to this doomed dynasty, you will not degrade us in our decadence.”

Keris bows, and rises, and arranges herself to begin.

“Zanara?” she says softly in Rivertongue. “I need music. Give me... give me the ruin of empires, and the fall of the righteous nobility, and the tragedy of Ages. Make it pretty. But make it sad.”

Zanara claps, thinks for a moment, then says “There are shadows here for you, Keris.” Then she raises her voice in pure, wordless notes.

Her first step is slow. Keris doesn’t want speed or energy here. She wants mourning, and honour. Adapting a gilmyne lament and blending it with slow Snake forms, Keris calls on the insectoid Things of the Meadows to crawl out of the darkness and wail a dirge.

The dance she gives is one of grandeur laid low. It weeps for eleven houses arrayed around an empress, and how each in turn fell to nothing. She doesn’t sing, but her sinuous movements speak eloquently of pain and shame and humiliation that cannot be borne yet must not be shown, of locked doors hidden away from prying eyes where the last of the dynasty lie maimed.

She cries as she dances, and the Things in Shadows play, and Zanara’s song rises high over it all in wordless, beautiful clarity.

((5+5+3 Wolf-as-Lamb Style+1 bonus {conduct one’s self within the standards of behaviour expected by onlookers}+2 stunt+10 Szoreny ExD {meet expectations, attention of others, masks his feelings, melodramatic}=26.  
Enhancing with Attention-Holding Grace and Flowering the Fairer Face. Gah! Only 8 successes! I mean... that’s still good, but wtf? Clearly Keris is off-balance from her stupid useless Compassion making her feel bad.))

Divisa watches until the dance comes to an end. Then she says something. “At least you humour me with feigned obedience,” Zana translates. Keris winces a little. That hadn’t been her best dance. Her heart is aching for the noble dragon, and it’s throwing her off. She’s showing too much pity - and yet how can she help it? How can she look upon Divisa and _not_ weep, when she should be so beautiful and yet suffers such pain?

“You will come and dance for me when I give the word,” the order comes.

“Yes, my lady. At your wish.”

The dragon’s chains rattle as she shifts, her healthier head turning to look at Keris. She yawns at her, and Keris sees the emerald flame gleaming in her throat. “Then go,” Zana translates.

Bowing, and with tears still trickling down her cheeks, Keris retreats. When the door slams shut and the servants begin to chain it shut once more, she has to kneel down and hug Zana to her and cry into her shoulder for a minute or two, until the trembling stops and she’s able to forget the rolling stench of decay and the terrible bloodshot eye amidst basalt bone.

“That went well,” Lilunu observes. “She didn’t try to kill anyone.”

She is, by all indications, entirely earnest. It almost sets Keris off into tears again. Instead she sniffs and wipes her eyes, no doubt smearing her expensive makeup.

“I didn’t think...” she stammers, voice wavering. “I-I mean, Antifasi and Hermione h-have problems, b-but they don’t _look_ hurt, a-and Bruleuse has the d-darkness and the water and s-sounds so patient...”

She hugs Zana closer, clinging. Her tenth soul pets her hair understandingly. “Were you protecting me, by showing me them first?” Keris asks. “F-from how much some of your other souls suffer?”

Lilunu shakes her head. “She... is one of the most dangerous ones. I thought that perhaps...” she trails off. “Yes. Perhaps. The... the young sisters, they are the healthiest. But she is the eldest. And maybe the worst off.”

“And the King’s soul,” Keris murmurs. “He’s one of the most maimed. It might be passed down.”

With one last shuddering breath, she composes herself and rises. “I... I’ll work on some better dances for her, next time I come,” she promises. “Zanara can help me with them, later.”

Zana runs her hands through her hair. “I would be... careful coming alone,” she admits. “I’d prefer you or mother were here with me.”

“Yes,” Keris agrees immediately. “No coming here solo. Preferably only come with both of us. I could get away with dancing for her alone - I’m good at dodging. You shouldn’t risk it.”

Lilunu nods. “That’s for the best, I think.” She sighs. “Come on. Let’s get you two changed. I’ve lost my whim for having you go around like this.”

Something occurs to Keris as they head back to the central spire, and she ponders it for a little while before asking.

“Um... my lady? I met... well, I met Kyrie, earlier. She said she’d been helping you.”

“Ah, yes.” Lilunu beams as Keris as they stroll through one of the parks. “She’s one of my favourites, you know.”

Keris returns a faint grin. “Yes, I thought she would be. Though she was a surprise to me - I haven’t seen anything like her in my domain, yet. Calesco’s only matured keruby that I know of are, uh, very different.”

She shakes her head. “But, um, she mentioned taking on your pain, and it made me wonder whether, uh... you needed help from me and Iris. After all the stress I caused you.”

She is silent for a while as they walk through sweet-smelling, bright red flowers. “That would be good,” Lilunu says. “I was... displeased with you, Keris, for how you got hurt. And that was bad for my health. We can go see to the children and pick up Iris, and then perhaps do that.”

“Yes, my lady.” They walk on a little further in silence as she searches for a topic. Thankfully, they just left a safer one.

“Oh, um... speaking of Kyrie. Vali and Zanara both have keruby maturations now, and it seems unfair to leave you with only four. I could make you a little fem and an agya as well, if you’d like. Though I won’t tell you what they’ll grow up into,” she adds with a grin. “That would be spoiling the fun of finding out.”

Zana claps happily. “Oh, I already made one for mother,” she says smugly. “I suppose Vali could provide one too.”

“Little Gura is working in one of my art rooms and he is as... how do you say it? As happy as a pig in mud.”

Keris laughs. “Oh, I’ll bet he is. Alright, a girl-fem then. I’ll get Vali to help with that when I have some time free. With how much he loves dragons, I’m sure he’ll be delighted to make a friend for you.”

Zana rolls her eyes, but Lilunu seems happy enough.

* * *

The babies are in a safe, stable, and presumably quite hard to break out of place. “The twins are very mischievous,” Lilunu observes, padding bare-footed through the halls, her hair tending to black. “I wonder where they could get that from?”

“Their fathers, my lady,” replies Keris with a straight face. “They must have been terrible influences. I’m run ragged keeping track of them, often enough.”

Lilunu herself may not be entirely a good influence, because she leans against the wall outside the room. “Well, I wouldn’t want to get between a mother and her babies,” she says, smiling widely. “You can go in and find them.”

Keris looks at her suspiciously. “... if they’ve set up a prank inside for me and I take a flying Kali to the head as soon as I step inside, I will be very upset,” she informs Lilunu. She gets a mysterious smile in response.

“Perhaps you should use the gifts of Elloge, then,” Lilunu tells her. “Have you ever watched your children when they weren’t aware you were there, Keris?”

“... yes,” Keris says slowly. Of course she has. Well, maybe not _watched_ , but she’s certainly kept an ear on them from a room away plenty of times.

Lilunu just arches an eyebrow. “Are you sure?” she asks. “Step offstage, as Eko says, and see.”

Keris’s curiosity is piqued now. Doing as Lilunu suggested, she steps backstage and removes herself from the narrative, then slips through a side door into the soundproofed room.

She’s met with chaos. Well, not complete chaos. Aiko and Iris are happily playing in the corner next to a harpist, either oblivious or uncaring to what’s going on behind them.

But Ogin and Kali are ganging up on the other attendants with _vicious_ glee. Keris watches, faintly appalled, as they display a level of wilful mischief that she’s _never_ seen from them so overtly. Kali leaps around in the rafters, pretending to almost-fall again and again, and the terrified servants rush around underneath her to catch her if she should slip in truth - no doubt well aware of what Lilunu’s rage will be like should she be hurt. To say nothing of Keris’s own.

And as they dash and dodge this way and that, Ogin slips among them; shockingly fast and fluid on his tails, unseen at the level of their knees. He trips demons here and plucks little trophies from them there - beads or woven tassels from their clothes, or things from their pockets that he examines, feels, shakes and licks before throwing away.

Keris gapes.

And then the door cracks open, just a little. It’s unheard above the noise of Kali’s delighted shrieks, and so small is the gap that it’s barely visible - Keris herself only notices because she can suddenly hear Lilunu’s whisper to pay attention. Kali keeps going for a moment, but Ogin...

... Ogin stiffens. Forgetting the game, he looks around as if he can sense something, quickly triangulating it back to the door - and Keris sees his eyes focus on something hanging in thin air near the open crack. He glances up to Kali, who pouts and lets herself drop, and like that they’re well-behaved again; Kali caught in a demon’s arms and Ogin returning to pick through his collection of scavenged trophies a second time.

Keris retreats back outside before stepping back on-stage, and stares at Lilunu. “... what did I just see?” she asks. “It’s like he knew you were there as soon as the door opened. He was seeing something I wasn’t.”

Lilunu nods. “I think he can see where people are looking.” She frowns. “Like, say, he can see where the light from my eyes falls and tell where I’m looking - only he can do it for people whose eyes don’t glow. Like yours.”

Keris frowns too. “But still, I would’ve heard... him...”

She stops. Thinks about that.

“... wait,” she says slowly. “If. If he can do this with all his senses - see sightlines, sound out their range of hearing...”

Several dots connect. “Son of a _snake,”_ she hisses. _”That’s_ how he found me in Silver Lotus! I’m a giant alarm bell for him! He can tell whenever I’m in the same wing of the _house!_ No wonder I never catch him up to anything!” She squeezes her eyes shut. “Argh. And he coordinates with Kali, so _she_ might as well know it, too. How’ve I even kept them under control as much as I have?”

Zana is just grinning. Like a cat.

Keris glares at her. “Did you know? Did you _already know this?”_ she demands. “What else haven’t you told me?!”

“Oh, no, no.” The grin doesn’t go away. “But your mistake is assuming you keep them under control now.”

“... _urgh_ ,” Keris groans. “You... you might have a point there. Wonderful. I can see I’m going to be using this trick a lot in future to check up on them without warning.” She looks mournfully at Lilunu. “Tell me Kali doesn’t have any surprises as well. I’m not sure my heart can take any more.”

“No, I don’t think so.” Lilunu smiles. “Though, goodness, I nearly jumped out of my skin first time I saw how she changes her shape. I had wondered where all that ash was coming from.”

“... come again?” Keris asks. “I mean, I know she makes ash when she changes, but what do you mean by ‘how’?”

The demon princess frowns. “Keris, it’s like she’s dematerialising. She destroys her body and makes a new one.”

“She _what?”_ Keris yelps, spinning towards the cracked-open door. _”Destroys_ her- does it hurt her? Is she okay? She’s never hinted that it hurts!”

“Given how much she does it,” Zana points out, “clearly she doesn’t mind. Dematerialising is just a thing you do, you know?”

Frowning, Keris pushes the door open and smiles at the relatively-well-behaved room. “Hello, darlings,” she calls. “Kali, little feather, could you come over here and show mama how you change shape? Lili says it’s very clever how you do it.”

The tiger cub cocks her head, and then - poof, she’s a naked toddler, running happily towards Keris. “Mama mama mama you’re back where have you been all morning-day!”

“I was dancing, sweetie,” Keris says distractedly, focusing her senses on her daughter. It had been too fast for her to follow, as always - just a flash and then a different shape. “Again, sweetie?”

Poof. A little bird hops into her hands, flapping stubby wings. “Oh oh oh did you do the spinny jumpy thing?”

“No, sweetie, it was a slow dance.” Still too fast. But there had been _something_. Keris spares a moment to regret her coming headache and pushes her hearing to its limit, until the spire around her is a cacophony of noise and Lilunu a deafening orchestra behind her. Gritting her teeth, she hones in on Kali. “One more time?”

Poof. The bird is gone.

No. Not gone.

Keris listens, awed and terrified, as her daughter just... comes apart. Feathers and flesh and bone disintegrate into golden-red dust, and a spark from within lights it all ablaze. So fine is the powder that it goes up in an instant - that little puff of smoke and ash that accompanies Kali’s transformations. And what’s left...

... what’s left, for the briefest of seconds, is too obscured by smoke for Keris to see. But she can hear it. It’s a pulsing ball of golden fire; a flickering thing of sunflame and hellish heat that crackles with the ever-happy essence-melody of her daughter’s akuma-soul.

For the briefest of instants - less than a eyeblink, a fraction of an heartbeat - it hangs at the centre of the smoke. And then it breathes out a stream of dust around itself and flares, firing the powder like clay in the kiln and bringing solidity to it.

The little girl reaches up on tiptoe and hugs a stupefied Keris around the neck.

“Mama, you look silly like that! Your eyes are all big and your mouth is open!” Giggling, she copies the expression, and blows a playful raspberry.

Ogin looks up from his pile in the corner. “Mama. Hello. We were good.”

There’s a noise of outrage from Aiko, who’s sitting quietly behind Iris, tying her hair up in ribbons. “Auntie Keris, they were not good! They were bad all the time!”

Keris blinks dumbly a few more times at Kali before slowly returning to parent mode.

“I... ah...” She shakes her head and clears her throat, then puts on a stern expression. “Are you _sure_ you were good, Ogin? No mischief at all? You didn’t stress out your babysitters?”

“Mama,” Ogin says, big silver eyes looking up at Keris. “We’re always good.”

“And you’re not lying to your mama?” Keris asks, raising her eyebrows. She turns to Kali. “Either of you?”

“We were good and we had fun!” Kali insists.

Ogin gets up and toddles over to Keris, hugging onto her legs. “Yeah.”

Keris puts her hands on her hips. _”Kali and Ogin Daiwye,”_ she says in the dread maternal tones of Ire. “I was _in_ here just a moment ago, and I _saw_ you two ganging up on your poor babysitters to scare them stiff and steal their things. And _now_ you’re lying to me about it. What do you have to say for yourselves?”

“You didn’t see us,” Ogin tells her, without blinking. “Aiko is just making a fuss because she likes things quiet and Kali is never quiet.”

“Yeah,” Kali agrees. Loudly.

“Auntie Keris, they’re lying again!” Aiko fumes. Keris recognises this kind of dispute. She’s heard it before. How long has this been going on for?

“Ogin,” Keris says, eyes narrowing. “Do you remember when I took you to see Sasi? Do you remember how I surprised her? Even though she had her mind-hands ou-” She blinks. “Gods, no wonder you could mark the edge of her range. I had to learn where it was, you can _sense_ it.”

She shakes her head. “But you remember that, I know you do. Which means you also remember that I have ways of hiding so well that _nothing can tell I’m there_. Not even the way you can _tell when I can hear you_.”

Shock flashes across Ogin’s face. Then he pouts. “Mama, you’re _cheating_ ,” he tells her hotly.

“And _you_ were being _naughty_. In Lilunu’s house, to _her_ servants,” Keris retorts. “You two are both going to bed, right now, without pudding. And your toys are going to be restricted for the rest of the week, and there will be _no more_ opportunities for you to cause havoc like you were just now. Do you understand?”

They do not understand. They are shocked - shocked! And it’s unfair and mama is horrible and mean and there are tantrums and things go downhill from there.

Keris, however, is entirely unashamedly a mean horrible unfair cheating tyrant, and eventually the twins are packaged off to bed in a room they can’t easily get out of, with a servant checking in on them every so often to make sure they’re still there.

Sighing exhaustedly, Keris massages the back of her neck and collapses into a chair next to Lilunu.

“Aiko,” she sighs, and beckons the girl over. “Well done. You were a very good girl, and you did the right thing, and I’m proud of you. I’m sorry I didn’t know earlier about how they act when I’m not around. Has it happened before?”

Aiko looks piteously up at her, after making sure they’re not around. “Aunty Keris,” she tells her, “it always happens when you’re not here.”

Keris pinches the bridge of her nose. “Wonderful,” she sighs. “Then I’m sorry again, princess. Come on.” Tugging her up with a grunt, she sits Aiko on her lap - her thighs protesting a little at the weight - and cuddles her for a while, dropping the odd kiss on her forehead.

“I’m sorry you had to see that as well, my lady,” she says to Lilunu. “My twins don’t take discipline well, and it looks like I’ve rather spoilt them unknowingly.”

Lilunu smiles, helping Iris up onto her lap. “I wouldn’t know, I’m afraid,” she says. “But you two were well behaved, right?”

Iris puffs out flame, flicking her ribbon-braided hair. She seems happy, even if she does start chewing on one of the ribbons.

“Aiko and Iris were very well behaved,” Keris agrees. “And Ogin didn’t seem to mind that Iris was there. Hmm. I wonder if he knows I can see through Iris’s eyes. Or if he can tell when I do. I might be able to catch him off-guard with spot checks even if he can.”

She purses her lips. “Something to think about later,” she decides. “For now, Aiko, I think I’ll put you down for a nap as well - _with_ pudding, and as many toys as you want - and then have a talk with Lady Lilunu about grown-up stuff. Okay?”

“Where’s mama?” Aiko asks.

“... Sasi has some important work that she went off to do,” Keris says. “She’ll be back soon, and you can see her after your nap.”

Aiko nods, but her little sigh says a lot. Once she’s tucked away in bed, Keris closes the door to her bedroom softly and turns to face Lilunu. “Okay,” she says. “So. Where shall we do this? The baths, this time?”

“I believe so,” Lilunu says, hefting Iris up onto her shoulders. The little girl flows back into being a dragon, and snakes around her neck like a scarf. “At it makes clean up easier. And less hard on your clothes.”

* * *

The water in the baths boils. Rainbow fire plays over Keris’s left arm, clinging to Iris’s form. Her arm is already snapped. Zanara is over by the door, hiding behind an overturned table.

But right now none of that matters, because she can feel the toxic, thick, clammy sludge that tastes like the Great Mother that’s choking and burning Lilunu’s insides. That has tied her chakras into knots and means it’s welling up and flooding places it shouldn’t be.

((Endurance + Occult, Diff 8 to channel))  
((Oh boy. It’s getting harder. Joy.))  
((... wait, if these are Occult rolls, can I apply Needles and Spires Style to them?))  
((Yep!))  
((Sweet! 3+5+3 Needles and Spires+2 stunt+4 Malfeas ExSux {resilient, strong, ostentatious}=13. 8+4=12 sux.))

Keris shouts and shrieks and screams as her arm twists through shapes. It’s no less wild and unfurled. It’s not controlled. But she’s getting used to doing this, and she can ride the wave now. Every yell comes with a vented burst of Yozi essence from a chakra point or a pore. Every thrashing, flailing motion slams her out-of-control limb down on something to hit a pressure point.

It’s not good for the surroundings. Water boils into blood and tar and mercury that foul the baths. The crystalline walls of the pool gain jagged, fractured patches of ice and brass and amber. A plume of fire sets a bench aflame, a swarm of stinging insects burst from her skin and dissolve into acid halfway to Zanara. A sudden, unexpected shift to Isidorite bronze takes Keris off-guard and pulls her off her feet, sinking her to the bottom hard enough to crack the base of the tub.

But she surfaces gasping, with a human arm. Something is gripped in it; a heat-haze ripple in the air her fingers are curled around, which sinks into her pores and disappears even as she watches.

She shivers. The bathwater’s gone cold all of a sudden. Like the heat got sucked right out of it.

Keris lifts her arm in front of her face, and makes a fist. Her arm shifts, cracking with the sound of bones as the flesh evaporates into iridescent light. She yelps, but this isn’t Lilunu’s power - at least, it’s not her power out of control.

Because what is left when her arm has finished transforming is this strange, fleshless wing of disrupted rainbow bones and white hot light. A wing that’s immature and cannot fly; a wing that has something of birds, bats and insects about it. It clenches when she tries to make a fist; it moves, shimmering like a heat haze, when she tries to move the arm.

There’s no hand in that arm; nothing that can pick something up, no manipulators. But when she flaps it, all she manages to do is splash. What use is that, then?

((Oh, does she get this one early? Or... ahahaha. Lol.))  
((Is the weeks-long training time for this one working out how to turn it on and off?))

“Ah... ahhh! Ahhh!” she yelps, flailing it at the frigid bathwater. “Lilunu! Help! Iris! How do I get my arm back?” She swipes it at the side of the bath, sending chips of crystal flying up as though she’d punched it.

Okay. At least she can still touch things. Sort of.

Now, what the fuck did she just do to herself, and can she turn it off?

Iris squirms off the arm, and onto the side of the bath, happily kicking her legs. She exhales a complicated pictogram at Lilunu, which Keris in her somewhat panicked state does not actually grasp.

“Are... you sure?” Lilunu asks her.

Iris makes an exasperated gesture with her hands, and breaths out an arrow that points at Keris’s arm, and then swivels to point at Iris herself.

“Yes, but it seems... mean?”

“Um?” Keris says, blanching.

Shaking her head, Iris just splashes Lilunu, then exhales a... chicken?

“Well, if you do know best...”

Lilunu lifts her hand, pointing a finger at Keris. It is a very aggressive finger-point.

Keris backs up hastily until she hits the wall of the bath, and then does her best to scramble out backwards. “Li-Lilunu? What are you doing? What’d Iris say? Why are you pointing at me?”

There’s light glowing in the nail. And then the air screams, the world bleeding to red and white and black, Iris a cheerfully grinning silhouette, Lilunu beautiful in crimson and snow white, and that light is coming closer it’s a killing light Lilunuhasbeenlearningbutthisisreallygoingtohurt...

Keris shrieks, throws herself backwards and swings her arm-wing into the path of the light on sheer, instinctual reflex. She’s not sure, later on, why she dove backwards and blocked rather than dodging to the side. Maybe it was an Ekoan flash of insight. Or maybe her new arm came with instincts on how to use it.

Either way, the finger-wide beam splits the air and punches directly into the white-light membrane of her wing as she shields herself with it, striking right above one of her rainbow bones. Keris doesn’t feel an impact. There’s no force behind the murderous light. But the bones surge brighter and the veins glut themselves on the power and the light is _consumed_ by the demonic wing-limb-thing.

And there’s a strength to it now. It hums with Lilunu’s energy, consumed and trapped inside its network of... not-blood vessels.

Lilunu’s finger smokes slightly as she lowers it. Iris nods happily, and gives Keris a thumbs up. According to her pictograms, dragons eat fire, lightning, big waves, cakes, sausages, flowers and faeries.

“...” says Keris. She sits down in the cold, fouled bath water and stares at the glowing wing attached to her shoulder. Distantly, she feels herself nod.

Okay. Okay, so. Her arm is a wing that’s a shield that eats energy. Or... no. Not energy. Essence. This was probably shaped by how she devoured the fae in Chir and then helped swallow up the chaos-taint to the landscape and Shape it.

She can probably drink up fireballs from Dragonblooded with this. Or... or essence-cannon shots, or lightning bolts... maybe even sorcery.

Keris makes a note to be really pleased about that later, when she’s worked out how to get her new wing to stop being a wing and start being an arm again, and also after her heart stops racing from the sight of Lilunu firing an attack at her.

“Okay,” she repeats, plaintively. “But how do I turn it _off?”_

* * *

Between the reports the Unquestionable who hear she’s in Hell, trying to organise a meeting with the reclusive Fossyi, and all kinds of other things, Keris’s holiday is exhausting. Sasi is still avoiding her and hasn’t given her Kalaska yet. She barely has any time for her pet projects.

Like, say, her painting.

The problem is, really, that she doesn’t need anything else but time. She has her own painting to examine as an example. She has Lilunu’s wonderful, beautiful book of art-philosophy that she can dredge for notes on how she made it. She has copies of a spell that does something similar from the libraries of Orabilis - though that involves carving faces into trees, rather than painting. She has her artifact paintbrushes that turn abstracts into concrete paints; linking the conceptual with the physical.

She has more than enough to create a refined, dedicated spell that does by sorcery what Lilunu did by arcane art and inherent nature and sheer arete. She just needs to claw out enough hours to sit down and work through the elements of the spell and _do it_.

It’s a pain. It’s a major pain, because between her work as Mistress of Ceremonies and her reports as Division Head of the Anarchy and her attempts to instil some actual discipline in the twins and her networking efforts, she’s doing something in the region of four full-time jobs even before she adds sorcery to the mix. Even in her sleep, she can’t always find the energy to drag herself into Dulmea’s tower and work on Salinan spell-structure.

But she perseveres. And one thing that keeps her coming back to it is how _hopeful_ Lilunu looks about the possibility of having a way to contact Keris and see Creation through painted eyes. As long as it only splits her focus like Keris’s does, instead of moving her mind as a whole, it’ll be more like sending off a mental Gale to her painting and getting it back ten days later than being invoked in an icon. That will be safe for Lilunu, and won’t leave her body empty for the Yozis to use for a week and a half - and will therefore be allowed.

She makes progress. Slow, laborious, un-fun and non-revolutionary progress. She gets a promise from Fossyi that he’ll speak with her next Calibration and manages to resolve a catastrophe where Ogin is refusing to talk to Aiko because she’s a “tale-teller” and other things, but it’s so unlike the glorious, free-flowing way she usually prefers to work.

And then one day, there comes a knock at the door of her workroom. She can hear it’s Sasi. And she can hear that Sasi has a mass of crystal-desert-shadow with her; weak compared to the two of them, but powerful compared to any mortal.

Pulling her hands down her face, Keris checks what she’s wearing. The quality of her day-to-day clothes has taken a sharp upturn since her investiture as Mistress of Ceremonies, and today she’s in a chiming sleeveless tunic made from golden Vitalius-cuttings over tightly clinging leggings of woven shadow. She still hasn’t figured out how to get her arm back - though she’s pretty sure she’s getting close - and the glowing wing is folded at her side, decorated here and there with opal-studded bands of silver that accentuate the free-floating bones like curious bracelets.

It’ll do. Wrapping her long, trailing braid around her neck - and then again around her waist as a belt - Keris heaves herself up from the desk she’s been bent over for the last hour and opens the door.

Sasi is there. She’s not looking her best. Keris hasn’t even been able to tell where she’s been for the past... while. She’s spent very little of the time in the Conventicle. But from the look of things and what she’s wearing and her smell and a thousand other little clues that Keris’s brain processes without higher thought getting in the way, she thinks her girlfriend has been spending a lot of the time on the Street of Golden Lanterns. Coping with their fight. Badly.

Behind her, a little girl wrapped up in grey, chiming with glass armour, grey hair falling out the front of her hood. Hiding behind Sasi’s legs.

Keris looks at Sasi looking at her. She can see her lover picking out the signs of exhaustion and stress in her own face and the little flicks of her hair. Taking in the glowing wing of white light and rainbow bones where her left arm should be. Opening her mouth, she tries to think of something to say, and fails completely.

Instead, she closes her eyes and sighs. Then she opens them and crouches down to Kalaska’s level with a patient smile, brushing her with Zanaran senses as she does.

((WWOF and FtFF for Envy, proudest trait and expectations.))

What a flinching, weak thing this demon lord is; no envy in her, but Keris barely needs the Quicksilver Forest to see the attention she gives to the little glass fox that hides behind her. And she doesn’t expect much of Keris; only neglect or anger, and to be treated as a burden.

((She doesn’t envy Keris, and her proudest trait is her Familiar 3 - that she has a pet. She expects Keris to ignore her or shout at her, and treat her as a burden.))

“Hello Kalaska,” she says softly. “It’s nice to finally meet you. I’ve heard a lot from Haneyl. She’s written you a letter that’s just inside, if you want. It’s the green letter on my desk, just over there.” She steps out of the way and points so the little girl can see. “Do you want to read that while I talk to Sasi quickly?”

She looks up, meets Keris’s eyes with those solid sky-blue eyes of her own - the only bit of her that doesn’t look just like a much younger Sasi - and then without ever showing her back to Keris but no longer looking at her face, she edges around her and takes the letter.

“Well,” Sasi says, and her voice is a croak. “I did it. Like you asked.”

“Yes,” says Keris, and steps out of the workroom to give both them and Kalaska some privacy. “Thank you, Sasi.”

She bites her lip. “I know this will sound flat,” she says. “But I love you. I want you to know that, because... because Chir was a wakeup call, and I don’t want it going unsaid. I love you, and I’m sorry I hurt you, and I really do think this will help.”

Shifting her weight, she reaches out for Sasi’s hand, slowly enough that she can pull back if she wants. “I... can guess you’re not okay right now. I know you’ve been avoiding the Conventicle. But I... if there’s any way I can help you feel better, please tell me. I want you to be happy.”

((Per + Pres, declare principles you’re trying to hit))  
((Keris-as-a-protector love, Seresa indulgence and wanting to be happy and put the fight behind them, possibly a bit of Moneha control by giving her the reins of the conversation. Also, amusingly, I think Keris’s weird wing-thing will have perked her curiosity a little. But mostly the first two.))  
((4+5+2 Eternal Matriarch+1 bonus {resolving arguments via common Principles}+3 TLA-stunt=15. x2 Hidden Depths Temptress to get Sasi to forgive her, Sasi still has -4 MDV from TLA. 6x2=12 sux.))

“What am I meant to say?” Sasi’s jaw tightens. “I thought you...” she bites back what she was going to say. “You did that in my dreams, Keris. In my dreams. And you were threatening me. I... I was _scared_ of you.”

She smells of other people. Quite a lot of other people. Keris wonders how much time she’s actually been sober since they had their fight. Dragons. She has to have... she has to have not just been on a weeks-long bender, orgy and drug session, right? Right? She’s Sasi. She couldn’t take such a thing.

Keris’s heart clenches with fear, and for a moment she sees Gull’s face overlapping Sasi’s.

((Compel on Keris’s Fear principle - suppress or suffer that Emotion.))  
((Keris won’t suppress.))

She pales, taking Sasi’s hand as gently as she can and kneeling down, still holding it.

“Sasi,” she whispers. “I promise - I _promise_ , I didn’t mean to have that argument there. I...” she shakes her head. “Gods, Haneyl told me about this _months_ ago. I didn’t dare bring it up at first, I was so scared of getting angry at you. I never want you to be scared of me. I would never betray you like that. I _couldn’t_.” She chokes a little as she presses a kiss to Sasi’s fingers, staring up at her earnestly.

“You shouldn’t get attached to her,” Sasi pleads, her voice cracking. “She’s not a girl. She’s everything that has ruined my life. I wish I was rid of that part of me, I really do.”

Keris flinches, hoping in vain that Kalaska can’t hear her.

“I love every part of you, Sasi,” she says, brushing another kiss across her palm. “I won’t argue with you about this. I won’t get angry at you again, I won’t yell, I won’t trap you anywhere. But please, _please_ let me try. Please let me protect you. _All_ of you.”

Shaking a little, she lowers her forehead to Sasi’s fingers. “Eko is the part of me that went for Chen in that storehouse. She saved my life a dozen other times, and I love her now. I know your souls aren’t the same as mine, but... that doesn’t mean there’s no good mixed in with the bad. At the very least, let me try to show you how I see you.”

There’s a wet sound in Sasi’s throat, and she throws herself over Keris, clinging to her neck, stinking of drink and other men and women and stranger demons, her weight on Keris’s shoulders. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I couldn’t... I couldn’t handle us fighting and I went off to... I’ve been just trying to forget, Trying to be brave enough to face you.” Sasi snivels, tarry shadow dripping onto Keris’s back. “I... it’s the her in me. So I tried to hide in a bottle and in people’s beds. In the Street of Golden Lanterns. I... I... I...”

Keris gets back up to her feet and hugs her. “I know, I know. It... it’s okay.” It’s not, entirely, but this is Keris’s fault and so forgiveness is the least she can do. “It’s okay, Sasi. I love you.” She kisses her cheeks and wipes away the shadowy ichor of her tears.

“Listen, I... um... I’m working on something. A spell. To replicate my painting. I know you can’t take it with you to the Blessed Isles, but if I finish this before you go back - or at Calibration, if I don’t - can I make one for you? Then I can keep your painting, and instead of me visiting you, you can visit me. It probably won’t have an inner sanctum, but we can talk - and you can see Aiko, and even Testolagh when he comes to Saata. Or maybe Aiko could take the painting with her when she goes to stay with him. Whatever you want. I just... I don’t want you alone out there, and I don’t want to leave us with no way to talk.”

((... lol, that’s hitting Keris, Testolagh _and_ Aiko Principles along with Marenolo.))

“We can see what we can do,” Sasi says, biting her lip. “Uh. I... I should probably go clean myself up. I... I... I...” She swallows. “Do you want to have dinner later? And... then go to bed? If... if you’ll have me back?”

“Yes! Yes, please, of course. Uh...” Keris pauses, and quickly consults her schedule with Dulmea. “Um, hang on... okay, I can move the review of the arena reconstruction off to tomorrow, and Quintus’s thing doesn’t actually _need_ me, I was just going to show my face to network a bit...”

There’s a little more muttering and a couple of questions from Dulmea, then she looks up with weary relief. “Yes,” she repeats. “I’ll probably have to leave before you wake up - like, way before; more so than usual - because Lilunu’s got me doing a massive audit of what food we produce for the revelries inside the Conventicle against what we have to have imported. But I can promise you an evening, a dinner and a romantic night in bed for sure.”

And that’s enough to get Sasi sagging against the wall, laughing incredibly hard. Keris is slightly insulted by that, and rather more insulted when Sasi gasps out, “You! You, talking about having to do that kind of thing! You of all people!”

Keris pouts and grumbles at her, but she can’t work up any anger - not when she’s still scared at how much their fight must have hurt Sasi.

“Yeah yeah,” she gripes, “laugh it up. If I’d known there was this much behind-the-scenes organising and paperwork involved in this position, I’d have thought twice before taking it.”

That only produces harder laughter, and Sasi staggers off. Partly from the drink, but mostly from her uncontrollable giggles. Muttering sulkily to herself, Keris takes a few deep breaths until her heartrate settles, then gives herself a little shake. A chorus of chimes go up from her tunic, and she cracks her neck.

Then she turns back to the door. She has sorcery theory to finish, a hurt and sad little demon lord to get to know, and a romantic evening to plan. And some rescheduling notices to send out with Kyrie. And tomorrow she’s got a morning full of auditing orchards and farms to look forward to.

So much to do. So much to balance.

But she’s not going to get any of it done standing out here.

Summoning up a calm and gentle smile, Keris opens her workroom door and goes to greet the latest member of her family.


	17. Epilogue - She Is Revealed

Little River’s estate has never been as green as it is when Keris returns to Saata.

The jungle around it is almost preternaturally lush, growing out of control as the year reaches an end. There are unripe fruit on all the trees, and some kind of sprawling plant has grown up all the facades of the building and covered up the white stone. There’s even grass growing on the roof and deep, ivy-green canopies set out to shade the exterior from the harsh sunlight. The overhanging leaves are reflected in the streams that run past it, down to the overgrown rubble that one day - she promises - will be a beach.

She whistles as her little group comes up on the manor, looking around with raised eyebrows.

“Looks like this was a really good Wood,” she notes to Rathan as they climb up the path from the beach. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say Haneyl had spent the season here.” She pauses. “Yes, darling, it is very pretty. Of course you can have cuttings. No, I don’t think anyone did it deliberately, dear - Calesco’s been in charge. It’s probably just been a really good growing season.”

Xasan is the first to see them, sitting beneath the shade of a jungle tree, the dappled light playing over his face as he fishes. “Oh, Keris!” he calls out, waving to her. “Are you just back?”

“Fresh from the beach!” she calls, angling over to him. “My boots are still wet with brine! How’s Wood been? It looks like the jungle exploded all over my nice white manor house!”

“Oh, aye, things are growing here nothing like they would back home.” He picks up the delighted Kali and cuddles her. “Things have been pretty quiet. Ali’s been working on the fittings for that wing like you wanted, Hany’s been helping out, Calesco’s been being you and I’ve introduced Rounen to fishing. Well, reintroduced. He said he used to do it as a boy.”

“I don’t think spitting fire at anything moving in the water counts,” Keris says dryly. “At least, not how you count it.” She flops down next to her uncle. “Ask me how my Wood went. Go on. Just ask.”

Xasan accepts Ogin’s quiet hand-squeeze, and goes back to tickling Kali. “How was it?”

_“Uuuurrrgh,”_ Keris groans melodramatically, and keels sideways into his lap. “That’s how it went, uncle. It went _uuurrrgh_. I got a new job. No, _another_ job. ‘Cause I still have my old one too. On top of the new one. Which is all organisy stuff like Rounen usually does for me. Do you know how much behind-the-scenes work goes into organising massive flashy parties, uncle? Do you? It’s a lot. It’s an _army_ of lots. It’s an army of lots with artillery crewed by _so much_ -ness.”

She raises a feeble hair tendril. “Go on without me. Take care of the babies in my stead. The ledgers and paperwork killed me, uncle. I’m not long for this world.”

Xasan sighs. “Has she stopped going on like this?” he asks Rathan.

Rathan shakes his head. “No, she has not,” he says wearily. “Women, eh?”

“Oh, by the way, I think I saw Oula down by the beach.”

“Right. Vali, you can see to my bags,” Rathan says immediately, vanishing beach-wards with impressive alacrity.

“Traitor!” Keris yells after him half-heartedly, but stays draped over Xasan’s knees. After an entire season of not-enough-sleep, she’s ready to doze off and start snoring, until her treacherous mean cruel uncle shoves upwards with his knee to tip her off.

One resentful grey eye opens and stares up at him from ground level.

“When they bury me in a tomb of cost-expenditure summaries,” she says with wounded dignity, “I’m going to make them write your name on the top as the arch-traitor who left me to succumb to my wounds.” She heaves a great sigh. “Where’s everyone else? Also what day is it; I kinda lost track of Creation’s calendar while I was there and I wasn’t totally sure which day we left on.”

Xasan scratches his chin, making a sound like sandpaper. “Fourth day after the Wood-Fire moon. I think it’s mostly just me, Ali, and the servants,” he says. “Uh... Evedelyl took a lot of the Lionesses up into the highlands, and I think Calesco is in Saata.”

“Urgh,” Keris mutters. “Well, much as I want to see her, if I don’t get some sleep soon I really am going to collapse. Five days was not nearly enough time to rest; especially not with the twins on-board.” She picks herself up and shakes the dust off, then gives him a proper hug. “Can you keep Aiko and the tiny terrors here entertained while I go see Ali and Hany and then find a bed? Yell for Vali if they start giving you trouble. Well, my two, anyway. Aiko’s well-behaved.” She drops a kiss onto the little girl’s temple, and ruffles the twins’ hair. “Be good, okay?”

“Mama,” Ogin says, seriously and without a single trace of guilt, “we are always good.”

“I’ll keep an eye on them,” Aiko says just as seriously.

Keris rolls her eyes, and departs towards the forge with a wave. If she’s lucky, she can catch both Ali and Hany there, say her hellos, dispense hugs and kisses and the promise of presents later on, when she’s awake enough to give them out properly, then go find Atiya and a bed and collapse.

Her brother isn’t in the forge. He might be elsewhere in the building, working on the fittings Ali mentioned. But Hany is there, with a put-upon face and a mop as she cleans the floor. The sight of her aunt is enough to get her dropping the mop and marching over.

“You’re back! Dad is making me clean the floor and it’s not fair!” Hany asserts, clearly wanting to get her case in quickly.

“Oh?” Keris says, amused. “Not even a hello for your beloved aunty who’s been gone a season? Straight to how unfair your father is? It must be a grave offence he’s committed.” A hair tendril snags the mop and dangles it in front of the pouting girl. “Why’s it not fair?”

“Because it’s the floor of the forge!” Hany insists. “Everything in here is dirty and sooty! Cleaning it won’t make it clean! And he’ll just make it dirty as soon as he lights the fire again!”

“And what did he say when you told him that?” Keris asks, privately betting that the words ‘builds character’ were probably involved.

“He said that it’s about keeping the dirt under control and not being told off by the maids for walking soot into the house! But that happens anyway!” Hany looks up at her piteously. “Those three are really bossy! They act like they’re in charge!”

Keris chalks up a point for Ali in her head and taps her niece on the nose. “They are in charge. Of keeping the house clean.” She grins. “But... hmm. How long have you been at this? And bear in mind I can tell when you’re lying.”

“Hours and hours and hours, slaving away!” Hany insists, throwing her arms wide.

From the state of her niece and the fact that she is genuinely pretty filthy by this point, Keris suspects it’s probably about an hour.

“Hmm. Alright, come here.” Lifting Hany into her hair, Keris bounces her once or twice and leans the mop against the doorframe as she exits. “There. Now you’re not tracking soot everywhere. And since I want to talk to Ali before collapsing somewhere and sleeping for a week, I’m recruiting you away from sweeping to lead me to him. Point the way.”

“He’s doing window stuff today. Or maybe door stuff,” Hany contributes vaguely.

Keris eventually finds her brother on the other side of one of the wings, working with some of the other helps to move a new door with thick iron hinges into place.

“Up... up...” he calls out. She waits until it’s in place and the work crew are fastening it, then strolls up with a whistle to get his attention.

“Thank you, Hany,” she says, kissing her sooty hair. “Excellent father-finding skills; well done. Hi big brother, I’m back. And exhausted. I need to pick better holidays in future; this one was full of paperwork.”

“Oh, Keris!” Her brother, smelling of sweat and soot and wood stain wraps him up in her arms. She’s stronger than he is, but he _feels_ stronger to her, with his blacksmith’s arms. “You’re back!” He glances at Hany. “And I suppose you’re a reason for her to slack off.”

“I was ordered by Aunty Keris to help her find you,” Hany tries.

“It’s true. She was,” Keris adds cheerfully as she hugs back. “Apparently she’s been slaving away for hours and hours and hours in a forge that’s impossible to clean, because you’re a mean unfair taskmaster who just doesn’t understand.”

“She’s exaggerating,” Hany gets in quickly, when her father frowns. “I just said I’d been at it for an hour or so!”

Ali sighs. “You can’t be too soft on her,” he says. “She needs to learn how to focus on things. She’s six... oh, by the way, what did you do for your birthday, Keris?”

“And where’s my present?” Hany gets in quickly.

“I will give out presents when I’m awake enough to remember which one goes to who,” Keris tells her with a knowing smirk. “And they’re hidden with magic and secrets, so you won’t find them early by searching my luggage. Or by waking me up before I’ve finished sleeping. And, uh, my birthday...”

She massages her temples. “Gods, yeah. I’m twenty five now. I was so buried under work I don’t think I even noticed it passing... oh no, wait, yes I did. That was when I worked out how to turn my arm back.” She pats her thankfully-human-again left arm gratefully. “Good girl, Iris. Well done on figuring that one out. Even if you did spend the first week and a half pelting me with repeated wing and arm pictures that weren’t at all helpful.”

From Iris’s wriggling, she seems to think it was Keris’s fault for not being smart enough to understand her.

Oh gods, Keris suddenly realises. It’s like Eko. Eko is inside Keris. Iris can get in there. Eko and Iris may have been... doing an equivalent to talking.

Her babies are plotting against her. Again. Again again.

She gives a mournful little groan, and drops her face into her hands. “Urgh,” she whimpers. “Anyway... how was it here? Has Calesco been holding up okay? She was... upset, when we left.”

“Well enough, I think.” Ali shrugs. He taps his head, clearly thinking hard. “I think... I think someone mentioned a note for you in your workroom? It might have been her. But maybe it wasn’t important. I think it just got mentioned in passing.”

Keris makes a pitiful face and wars with herself for a moment. But...

“... uuuurgh, if it’s in my workroom, it probably is,” she grumbles. “Rala’s not allowed in there, so it was probably Calesco or Rounen. And if Rounen left it in there instead of my desk... yeah.” She sighs. “I’ll go see what it is. But then sleep!” Her stomach growls. “Food! Food and sleep. Please tell Heba to grab something quick from the larder and bring it up to me.”

“Well, then,” Ali says, grabbing his daughter by the shoulder, “looks like _someone_ has an errand to run.”

Keris smiles to herself. Ali is being more assertive, less worried. That’s nice. She trudges upstairs, inwardly cursing Past-Keris for putting her workroom so high in the central wing, and taps out the sequence on the stretch of bare wall that leads in to the hidden room. Her medicinal plants and northern herbs in here have had a good growth season too; some of them are overflowing their containers and spilling tangles of foliage across the shelves. And there’s a little pot of Haneylian fire that’s been kept fed, too; casting emerald light across the ceiling. Keris smiles at the mark of her daughter’s work, and looks around for the note.

Except something is wrong. Something is wrong and she doesn’t feel right about it. It’s hard to pick up until...

The carpet. It wasn’t jade-green before. And her wall hangings weren’t green. Her paintings have changed from seascapes to jungle scenes.

She sees the note. Her name in rich green ink - the same shade as Zanyi’s eyes - on plain cream paper. Snatching it up, she unfolds it, heart hammering suddenly for some reason she hasn’t consciously put together yet.

This is what the note says:

* * *

_Keris,_

_This is all out of order, but I’ve tried writing this several times and had to burn the drafts. Sorry. This is kind of incoherent, because I’m dancing just up against the edge of protocol to write you this. In fact, actually, honestly I’m breaking protocol, but there’s a difference between following the rules and following the spirit of the rules. And the oath I swore long ago was to Creation, not the rules of… the people who run it._

_I hope you get home before this letter succumbs to… well, that’s one of the things I probably shouldn’t talk about. I used some of your very expensive ink to write it, though, so it should hold out fairly well. Still, come home quickly. You’re one of the loose ends that won’t tie itself up, and you’re going to need an explanation._

_It’s a breach of protocol to give you this much, but I know my cousin. If you don’t get this, you’re going to start asking questions. Violently. And the world will tear if you unleash yourself on it. I don’t want you destroying causality when you start breaking things to find out the truth, and I don’t want you hurt when Heaven turns its eyes on the person looking for an unperson. A person who doesn’t exist. Me._

_After all, as far as the world is concerned, I won’t have existed. I won’t be on the records of Windswift College. Hanilyia won’t remember me. Ali will probably vaguely remember that my daughter’s mother died in childbirth, but he won’t be able to tell you her name. This isn’t my conscious choice. This isn’t something I want, trust me, Keris. But it’s going to happen, whether I want it or not. So please, look after them for me. I’ve seen how you are with all your children, and you’re going to have to be a mother to your niece as well._

_I’m gone by my own choice. No one took me. Don’t come looking for me. I sort of broke into your sorcerous workroom when you were gone - yes, yes, very naughty of me - and that’s what I needed to remember who I am. Oh, I’m Zanyira, born in Baisha in Taira, but I’m much more than that too._

_Just like you._

_Only - sorry, Keris - but you might be able to guess that I’m not like you. Our natures put us on different sides of a war that happened five thousand years ago, and whose echoes still sound today. I can remember scraps of the war. I think I’ve been dreaming of them for longer than I knew. Or maybe it was a different war. Maybe the war I’ve dreamed about is the one that came later - and which, I suspect, indirectly led to you. You and your kind._

_I hope we’re not enemies. I don’t want us to be enemies. But I swore an oath, long, long ago to Creation - and you’re not a creature of Creation. You haven’t been since your masters chose you._

_I wasn’t chosen. I was born to this. All my life has shaped me for this role and I’m so, so sorry if what happened to you was just part of the cosmic plan that existed to train me. To shape me into being who I am. Your gossip-witch cousin. The one who knows all the secrets._

_Here I am, in territory I shouldn’t talk about. But I mean it when I say I don’t want to be your enemy. I could probably have insisted that the Harvest Rite be used to relocate Ali and Hanilyia somewhere else, but I’m leaving them with you as a mark of trust. Please trust me that that means I know the value of secrets. I don’t think you’re an enemy of Creation by inclination. Please don’t prove me wrong._

_You might see me again. You might not. It’ll depend how things ago. I do want to see you again, but when the time is right. Windswift has helped me pick up some of the talents I used to have before I wound up as a peasant girl, but there’s a lot still missing. Bleargh, time for a couple of years of very compressed training, if I remember protocols correctly. After all, I’ve remembered who I am, but there’s a lot I need to pick up again. Dying and being born again really leaves you rusty with the rites and procedures you need in my very certain line of work._

_I’m off to talk to someone in Saata. I always thought they looked funny, but I know what they are, now. They’ll take me where I need to go (if they know what’s good for them). I may have to knock some heads together to make sure some asshole isn’t squatting in my house._

_All my love,_

_Zanyi ♃_

_PS, also, all my love to all the family members who’ll remember me. Atiya won’t, and I don’t think any of the lesser demons will, but I’m not sure about the twins or the children._

* * *

When Keris comes back to herself, she’s shaking like a leaf. Her ears are ringing. Her throat is sore, and her eyes are reddened. Her fists are bloodied.

Someone’s destroyed her lab - broken the tables, smashed the shelves, shredded all her pretty little herbs and scattered them across the floor like green confetti. The walls are dented and fractured. There’s nothing but white ash left of the papers piled everywhere - hopefully Rounen kept the copies somewhere safe. The floor and furnishings have been transmuted randomly in places; patches of sand and gnarled wood and toxic mercury.

She’s kneeling just in front of one that probably used to be part of a workbench. Her reflection in it is white-haired and pale-skinned and talking - or at least, its mouth is moving. Keris can’t really hear over the high-pitched _noise_ filling her ears.

“Mama!” A child’s voice can cut through Keris’s rage-grief-whatever she’s feeling. And it’s her daughter. Her Hermione, her daughter by choice. Who’s wearing her form and crying silver tears that seem to be her own. “Mama, she’s _gone_! I got back and she wasn’t here and no one remembered her and... and Zanyira is gone!”

“I- I know,” Keris says, tears still trickling down her face. “I know, silverling. She... oh gods, _Zanyi_. Why?”

She takes a breath. Takes another. Looks at her daughter, who’s crying, who’s in pain, who needs her.

She’d been very, very busy in Hell. She’d been rushed off her feet every day. She’d barely had enough time to sleep, let alone for her pet projects.

But she’d begged, borrowed, bartered and outright bludgeoned enough time out of her jam-packed schedule to go back to the Hundred Mirror Garden.

Reaching out with a shaking hand, Keris touches the pool. A ripple passes through it. And Keris lets herself tip forward on her knees to plunge headfirst into it, and through, and up into a world of warped reflections. It’s like stepping through cobwebs. But through the cobweb veil is this room, this reflected realm of the place Keris just... um, happened to.

But there’s one thing that’s not in the room that’s being reflected. Or, possibly, two things now. Because now there’s Keris, in mocha and crimson, and her pale reflection that’s so shocked she slithers back into being a little girl. So shocked she forgets to cry.

“You...” Hermione begins.

Keris spreads her arms simply, still weeping. “Come here, baby,” she says. “It’s okay. I’m here.”

Hermione doesn’t move. Perhaps still disbelieving, perhaps lacking any knowledge of how to start a hug properly. Or perhaps she’s just too upset. “Sh-sh-she’s gone and we talked and we were friends and people _aren’t_ allowed to leave me!” she wails, quicksilver running down her cheeks from her cinnabar-coloured eyes.

Sweeping forward, Keris gathers her into her arms, wrapping herself around the little girl who’s probably never lost a friend before. She flinches at first, breaking Keris’s heart - unused to touch she’s never felt. But Keris holds her tight, tight, tight to her chest, squeezing fiercely and pressing her little head into the crook of her shoulder. And slowly; unpractised and clumsy, Hermione’s arms and hair wrap around her in return and she clings, wailing her grief - not just for Zanyi, but for the catharsis of finally feeling another living thing and all the time she’d spent without it.

“I’m here,” Keris repeats into her hair, feeling the oath etched into her bones click into place like the keystone of an arch and resolve itself. “I’m here, my love. I’m here. I’ve got you. I know.”

“She has to come back! She _has_ to! So... so I can hurt her for leaving!”

“I’m sorry, Hermione. She’s...” Keris swallows with a painful lump in her throat. “She’s gone. She had to go. To... to protect us. To protect everyone. But especially us.”

She looks up - up at the impermeable silvery dome of the sky, in here, but she’s thinking of the sky of Creation. Somewhere up there, the green star of Jupiter gleams. Somewhere beyond that, Zanyira of Baisha is in Heaven even now, being trained as a star-chosen to...

... to what? Kill Keris and all her kind? No. Zanyi would never. Her note made that clear.

To fight for Creation, then. And that’s a fight Keris will be involved in - but Zanyi was right. It’s not one where she’s Zanyi’s enemy. Not by inclination. Not if she has any choice.

“But someday,” she whispers to her little quicksilver dragon-child, “we’ll see her again. And you’re right; we’ll be angry and shout at her then. But we’ll also hug her and tell her we love her and welcome her home. And you know why, my clever little darling?”

“Why?”

Keris smiles, pulling back just enough to look her in her cinnabar eyes.

“Because we have a grudge to hone against Orabilis and his ilk. And Zanyi can help us _win_ it.”


End file.
